Samuel Trautman committed his first murder near the end of '62, someone called Ryan, a C.I.A. greenhorn.
One of the good guys.
It wasn't a simple execution of an enemy spy, but a plain and real murder of a US citizen.
Ryan came in South-East Asia in 1962, six months before Trautman did.
He came in Indochina with the task of passing US weapons to the many irregular forces that used to fight against the communists (Montagnard, F.U.L.R.O., Arrows, etcetera...).
In the beginning, the CIA agent behaved well: he disguised himself as a real guns smuggler and cheaply passed everything he had to pass, and always to the right people.
But Ryan understood very well how things really went in Vietnam, and soon started to take advantage of it: 'places you go, customs you find'.
During the time-lapse of one year, the number of weapons 'mysteriously disappeared' while at Ryan's hands, increased excessively.
Ryan had understand that 'expanding' was the real buisness; in other words, finding new suppliers and new buyers, always selling some more and to everyone, the Vietcong included.
One year later, Ryan had his hands on everything: prostitution, drug refineries, slavery...
Above all, he started asking favours as payment, so to be sure to have so many friends to always get away with it, no matter the situation or trouble he would have ever ended up with, even with the Americans.
Also because - all things considered - in order to get a universal-immunity in Vietnam, you only had to bribe the South-Vietnamese Army... And nothing was easier than that.
So Ryan tried it, did it and became rich, powerful and autonomous, and the idea of one day getting back to Langley didn't even crossed his mind.
In Vietnam he lived as a king by then, inside a sumptuous country house and protected by his own army of men.
He was the living example of the 'Vietnam dream', from low-level spy to warlord in a blink of an eye, and with his hands in almost any criminal activity, with friends protecting him between both the ARVN and the Vietcong.
He didn't really worked for the CIA from a long time, even if on the papers he still did.
He did everything on his own, with weapons supplied by private citizens from all over the world: Americans, South-Africans, Chinese and even Russians.
He bragged himself for selling 'everything to everyone', as a 'real US pro'.
He lived in a big colonial country house right in the out-skirt of Saigon, surrounded by armed guardsmen as if he was an important diplomat of a non-existing nation.
Ryan used to launder his money investing it on his General Motors plant of choice in Saigon, which was a very good way to both cleaning the money and get even more very important friends.
The General Motors had no idea where all of this money came from, nor had any interest about it at all, nor the South Vietnamese had: when you invest tons of money in a third world country, no one asks you where all of this money come from.
They don't even want to know.
Ryan ended up under Trautman's sights when he started studying the ground to go into politics. Going into politics in Vietnam was slightly different with respect to the US.
It meant poking your nose between the intrigues of the capital city, and the ranks of the prime minister Diem: a favour here, a bribe there... And you started having a role over the government's decisions too.
But Ryan never got as powerful as he wished to be.
Once under Trautman's sight, his days as a king were doomed to an end... And by hook or by crook.
After six months in Vietnam, Trautman's period of adjustment as a spy was over.
The time had come for the colonel to take the initiative, to take action on his own... And Ryan was the first on the colonel's list.
But Trautman was going to kill a CIA agent, no matter how dirty: he and Garner were not authorized and Ryan had his ass much more than covered. So, at his very first initiative ever, the colonel was taking an all-in bet already. Their credibilities, careers, their lives... He and Garner were betting a very high stake over a very hard match to be fought.
First thing, Ryan succeeded in convincing a couple of CIA very important senior officers about being a good CIA child, and about selling to those he was supposed to sell only, using no secondary channels (and even if none of it was true at all).
These two bigwigs were much more powerful than Trautman was, and because of their friendship with Ryan they made Trautman and Garner look like two paranoid amongst the other CIA agents. In other words, the two bigwigs spread the word that Trautman and Garner were the witch-hunters kind of guys.
In those days, Trautman's notoriety as a 'rebel' was starting to spread out amongst the military already, so most of the secret servicemen believed in Ryan's version of the facts.
As a secondary factor, had anybody pushed Ryan against the ropes, he would have turned out talking not just with his own commanding officers, but to the press too.
He knew some very hot details about many so called 'victories' against the Vietcong, that could make those victories become much more 'realistic' under the public eye, so to say.
During three massacres at least, the ARVN made a clean sweep of all of his inner opposition (not communists) and did with the full knowledge and help of some US advisors.
The corpses of some children (charred by napalm) ended up been considered as Vietcong killed in action too, and Ryan knew names, dates, places and facts related to facts like those and enough to create a major, outrageous scandal on US soil.
On the other side, Trautman inquired about it.
The guns dealer never left anything on papers: he had no safe box with compromising papers to be opened by someone else if something had happened to him. There was no such thing, nothing at all... And this was a big mistake by Ryan's part, and that he had made because he use to consider himself untouchable inside his stronghold, together with an army of his own.
He had too many political an military supports to simply worrying about being killed in the streets, just like any other criminal.
In those days, 'technically' the Vietnam war had yet to start, and the 'fragging' term was not born yet
and the idea of an American military killing a CIA agent sounded like science fiction to Ryan.
But this superficiality was bound to cost him his life because, that night, science fiction was going to became reality.
***
That night Garner and Trautman both wore a 'black pajamas'.
First, they spent two hours studying the sentries movements in front of the country house, waiting for their paths to let them in unnoticed.
Only then, in the end, when all of the sentries were in the correct places at the same time, Garner and Trautman nodded each other and started walking fast and silently forward the villa's entrance, and finally got there unnoticed by a hair's breadth.
Once reached the wall of the building, they hide in the shadow.
They made it.
The house was big, dark and silent.
***
Trautman turned on the beside-lamp on the beside table.
The light was right in front of Ryan's eyes and he woke up shaking under the sheets.
He saw the big silenced barrel of Trautman's twenty two caliber pistol first thing, and pointed right at his face.
Only then did Ryan recognize Trautman.
During that very short while of pure horror, Ryan understood – and he did in the worst of the possible ways – how much he had underestimated the colonel.
He never really thought that the colonel could push himself so far.
After a first while of incredulity, the panic made Ryan so stiff that he went all the way back against the wall over his bed.
He took his pillow and pushed it against his chest, in a desperate attempt to protect himself just like a baby would have done.
“Don't kill me” he said, and by just doing that he touched a very delicate subject inside the colonel's mind.
Killing a man looking right into his eyes is not an easy task, not even killing a piece of shit like Ryan, who paid himself wealth, power and whores selling weapons to the enemies of his own motherland.
Even the expensive bathrobe he wore – black and gold-bordered – made Trautman feel sick.
The colonel didn't want to let Ryan talk, because it would have just made everything even more distressing.
So he shot Ryan immediately, before he could say a single word.
The Ruger MK I kicked two times at his hand and giving out a muffled sound.
A small black spot materialized over Ryan's forehead.
The CIA agent slowly tilted his head on one side.
His eyes half-closed, and in the end stopped.
The thud of the two shots – even if lowered by the silencer – seemed loud to Trautman, too loud, but after a very long while spent in still listening, Trautman established that inside the country-house nothing had changed.
Everything was quiet.
Garner stretched out toward Ryan, felt his neck with two fingers and then nodded to Trautman.
The colonel lowered his gun.
Time to move.
Garner went to the exit door and looked at the outside garden.
Two sentries walked forwards and backwards the yard with an irregular cadence.
In order to get out of there without being seen, Garner and the colonel had to wait that both the sentries were at the right place, and at the same time.
Trautman spent the first part of his wait looking at Ryan's inclined corpse.
Just a small amount of blood had come out from the two small holes.
When the colonel checked his wrist-watch for the first time, he felt like an hour had passed by, and yet only ten minuted had.
He then look at Garner's direction, but his mate just made him stay still with a gesture of the hand ('not yet').
The two sentries continued to walk around using irregular paths that could not be predicted, and the wait was exhausting.
It was like that damn night had no intention to ever end.
When Garner finally made his gesture, the two men got out from the house in a hurry.
They crossed the yard walking low, swift and silent, very silent through the darkness, as if they were two shadows.
A few minutes later they were on board of their jeep already and along Saigon's streets.