Saigon: A Novel Part 31

5.

The Viet Cong machine gunner, concealed in a clump of palm trees about a hundred yards from the ca.n.a.l, curled a forefinger around his trigger as soon as he saw the ARVN column emerging from the shade of Hamlet Three. s.p.a.cing themselves carefully ten yards apart in accordance with their commander's orders, the government troops began to spread steadily across his field of fire like pop-up targets on a fairground rifle range. They were little more than silhouettes under the fierce flood of sunlight, but he could distinguish easily the bigger Americans among the smaller Asian troops; the taller, long-striding one near the front, the other, bulkier man humping a radio pack halfway down the line.

The guerrilla's captured Thompson machine gun, oiled and cared for more carefully than any other possession in his young life, was set up at right angles to the marching column halfway along the dike, and he had to curb his impatience to begin firing at once. He was under strict orders to wait until the last man was well clear of Hamlet Three; then the whole column would have to take cover down the far side of the bank where the fifty improvised mines were buried at two-yard intervals. They had been made from captured 105-millimeter sh.e.l.ls, and the fuses in their tips had been replaced with percussion caps linked by wire to a detonator hidden in undergrowth at the edge of Hamlet Three; there, another guerrilla waited to activate all of them simultaneously thirty seconds after the machine gun opened up.

Before he left the cover of the trees, Captain Staudt, acting on an impulse, had called up the American major at headquarters and asked him to divert two armed HU 1-Bs to the area immediately; hairs that had sometimes p.r.i.c.kled on the back of his neck in France in 1944 and amidst the bare hills of Korea nearly a decade later, hadn't felt quite comfortable suddenly. The major had promised he would get the choppers over as soon as he could, but they were supporting another skirmish at the moment. As he walked on across the dike, Staudt scanned the fields on either side ceaselessly for suspicious signs; an unnatural hush seemed to have fallen over the paddies, and he was certain now that his scalp had begun to tingle. He turned to look back at Captain Hoang, but the Vietnamese officer was walking near the back of the column, ignoring him, his lips still pursed in an expression of petulance and affront.

Staudt, cursing under his breath, turned to peer forward again, and he happened by chance to be looking directly at the clump of trees where -the machine gun was concealed at the moment it opened up. He saw the first muzzle flashes spurt from the weapon as it began to hose the column from front to rear with a long unbroken burst of fire, and for a moment he stared at it stupefied. Then with the shrieks of half-a-dozen dying men ringing in his ears, he flung himself to the ground and swiveled to face the attack. Keeping his head low, he peered out under the rim of his helmet and began yelling for those around him to return fire on the tree clump. But there was no response, and when the machine gun began raking the column again in the opposite direction, he heaved himself reluctantly backwards off the dike into the paddy.

Fifty yards behind him Captain Hoang had gone over the edge the moment the machine gun started firing, screeching orders for his men to do the same. He fell straight into a small pit filled with three-foot-long bamboo spikes, and at least half of his men tumbled cursing into similar traps. But their oaths were drowned seconds later by the roar of the fifty howitzer "mines" exploding as one. Geysers of earth, flames and muddy water rose among the tumbling, shrieking bodies, and into this inferno the two other machine guns concealed in a gun port at the base of the bank poured long new bursts of withering fire.

One of the mines blew off both Lieutenant Trang's legs and hurled his broken body high into the air above the head of the horrified Gary Sherman; dazed with shock, the American stood up, looking wildly around for cover, but despite this foolish mistake - or perhaps because of it he miraculously survived the first bursts of the twin machine guns. The squat Vietnamese sergeant with the M-79, in the eye of the storm with him, also escaped unscathed, and he remained crouching on the ground by his feet, his face frozen in an inane grin of fear.

His commanding officer, Captain Hoang, however, was less fortunate; as he twisted and flapped like a speared fish at the rear of the column, trying to free his feet and legs from the punji trap, he caught the eye of Ngo Van Minh, the eager young son of the Viet Cong's battalion commander. Settled comfortably in a sniper's nest in a tree bordering Hamlet Four, Minh watched Hoang intently, squinting through the sights of his gleaming World War Two Garand rifle, and when the company commander finally extricated his legs and flung himself gasping with pain on the bank, the boy squeezed off one careful shot. It missed by several feet, but taking his time, he fired carefully again, and this bullet hit Hoang low down in the back. His third shot, entering between Hoang's shoulder blades, killed him, and the elated boy, seeing the ARVN commander stop moving suddenly, defied all his orders and began scrambling down from his hideout.

In the opening barrage from the enfilading machine guns, Captain Staudt had been wounded in the chest. Wincing with pain and cursing the G.o.dd.a.m.ned soldiers and officers he was fighting with and the G.o.dd.a.m.ned country he was fighting in, he lay three-quarters submerged in the mud of the paddy, radioing the coordinates of their position for the helicopters and the T-28s which he was calling in to make a napalm attack on Hamlet Four. When he had replaced the handset, he glanced over his shoulder and saw that the British television crew had managed to scramble up the dike onto the path and against all the odds had almost reached the cover of the trees. One of them, the cameraman, was hobbling badly with a leg injury, and he saw that Naomi Boyce- Lewis was helping to support him, her arm about his shoulders. Not far away his camera lay shattered by a mine, and tangled skeins of film were spread around among the writhing bodies of wounded and dying Vietnamese No more than two dozen of the troops, as far as he could judge, had escaped injury altogether.

Staudt began shouting fresh orders for fire to be directed along the bank at the machine gun nest, but n.o.body responded; those terrified Vietnamese who hadn't already been killed were obviously pretending they had, hoping they could escape that way, and he fished his own Armalite out from under the water where it had fallen. But even before he tried to fire it, he saw that mud and slime had clogged the moving parts, and cursing the weapon as well as the soldiers around him, he flung it away.

The Thompson that had first raked the column from across the ca.n.a.l had strewn half-a-dozen dead or dying bodies along the dike path before unaccountably falling silent; the mines and traps together had killed and maimed perhaps another thirty or forty men, and most of the two dozen or so ARVN troops who had survived these onslaughts had dived Into depressions in the shallow paddy field to avoid the heavy-caliber machine-gun fire. A few, like Gary Sherman, after getting over their astonishment at finding themselves alive, had scrambled back up the bank to get clear of the deadly hail of frontal fire, and as he went, Gary had grabbed the petrified sergeant with the M-79 and hauled him bodily across the dike into the waters of the ca.n.a.l; crouching chest-deep to gain protection of the banks on both sides, he ordered the Vietnamese in sign language to load the grenade launcher. Christened "the elephant gun" by its users, the M-79 was a new weapon just introduced to the war. It looked like an enormous single-barreled shotgun, and its sh.e.l.l-shaped grenades sprayed enough hot metal in all directions on impact to kill everything within a twenty-yard radius. When the Vietnamese had loaded the weapon, to give him cover Gary straightened up suddenly and fired a long burst from his Armalite in the direction of the machine gun nest in the foot of the dike. The Vietnamese at his side grinned toothily, whether through relief or fear, Gary couldn't tell, and lifted the unfamiliar weapon to his shoulder. Because it was designed for ranges up to several hundred yards, the little sergeant had to adjust its sights repeatedly, and it took him several trial shots to get his aim; but with the American officer firing covering bursts and urging him on, he worked fast, slapping sh.e.l.ls into the breech in quick succession, slamming it closed and firing. His fifth grenade turned out to be right, and it rose in a gentle arc to drop accurately into the corner of the paddy below their direct line of fire. Immediately both machine guns fell silent, and the Vietnamese turned his gap- toothed grin on Gary again, this time undoubtedly beaming with delight. But as the American patted him on the shoulder in congratulation, he realized suddenly why the Thompson across the ca.n.a.l behind them had stopped firing; from the corner of his eye he saw two platoons of black-garbed main force Viet Cong rising from their camouflaged foxholes on the opposite side of the field to begin charging through the muddy water towards them.

To Captain Staudt, lying prostrate in the muck of the paddy field, the skirmish line of Viet Cong seemed to be walking on water. He could see Captain Hoang slumped motionless on the hank of the dike, and since there were no commands coining from the point, he a.s.sumed Lieutenant Trang must be out of action too. At last, he realized, he had what he'd wanted so desperately for the past year - operational control! But the line of guerrillas was only twenty yards away now, close enough for him to see their narrow-eyed faces contorting with hatred as they splashed towards him with bayonets fixed, and he knew then that for him operational control was going to last about five seconds more. Hauling his pistol from its holster he took careful aim at the guerrilla racing ahead of the line - then with a palpable sense of shock he realized it was a woman and his finger faltered on the trigger; a second later several bullets from her revolver slammed into his head and chest, killing him instantly.

In the ca.n.a.l Lieutenant Gary Sherman brought his Armalite to bear on the advancing enemy, but it jammed without firing another shot, and he watched helplessly as the Viet Cong closed with the remnants of the company, some shooting and stabbing with their rifles, others wielding crude, village-smelted knives. Methodically amid the butchery, the front rank of the guerrillas began wresting rifles, ammunition and radio packs from the dead troops, and on his orders the sergeant at Gary's side fired his last two grenades at the second wave of attackers. But the speed of their advance made them a difficult target, and although one or two crumpled into the mud, the majority ran on and the last gaggle of ARVN survivors began flinging themselves into the ca.n.a.l in a desperate effort to escape the final act of the carnage in the paddy field.

Almost all of them had already tossed their weapons aside and they ignored Gary's desperate attempts to rally them. When he spotted one man still clutching his M-2, he rushed through the water to wrench it from him, and resting his elbows on the ca.n.a.l bank he sighted on the nearest Viet Cong, a dark-clad figure racing towards the head of the column where Lieutenant Trang lay dying. Like Captain Staudt before him, Gary Sherman experienced a moment of shock when Tuyet Luong turned her head in his direction; she hadn't noticed him until that moment, and he saw the expression of alarm spread across her unexpectedly beautiful face as she caught sight of his leveled rifle. For the briefest instant their eyes locked, and the startled American delayed his shot; then Tuyet ducked out of sight below the bank and was gone.

A moment later the two HU 1-Bs called in by Staudt as a precaution burst into view above the trees, their rotors thumping and stirring the quivering air above the battlefield. Immediately a whistle shrilled and the guerrillas broke off from their grisly task to begin racing back towards the camouflaged tunnel entrances in the far, bank. In the few seconds it took for the heavily armed helicopters to swing around and start their attack, most of the guerrillas disappeared, dragging their war booty behind them, but out 'on the field the lone figure of young Minh was left struggling through the mud. From his sniper's nest in the tree he'd had to run twice as far as the rest of the two platoons to get in at the kill, and he had arrived among the prostrate government troops only moments before the helicopters appeared. He had seen the American captain toss away his Armalite, and after Tuyet Luong had shot the captain dead, Minh had been forced to grub around beneath the muddy water to find it. In his anxiety to catch up with his comrades he had fallen twice, and now as he panted across the field, weighed down by his Garand and the prized trophy of the new Armalite, he looked up and saw the first American helicopter sliding down through the air above him, bringing its guns to bear.

Because he was long-limbed like his father and a fast runner, he was sure he could dodge and sprint to Outwit the unwieldy aircraft, despite the weight of the weapons he carried, and as he quickened his pace he gloried in the unexpected excitement; fir a long as he could remember he had ached with impatience to grow up to be the kind of hero his father was, and now he'd be able to boast a little of how he had killed the Diemist captain with his third shot and then outwitted the American gunners in their iron skybirds. Perhaps he had disobeyed orders, But as soon as his father saw the new Armalite he would be proud of him, he was sure!

When the fiery red tracers from the HU I-B's six-barreled machine guns punched into the muddy water just ahead of him, Minh turned abruptly aside arid set off in a fast zigzag towards another set of tunnel entrances fifty yards away. The other helicopter, seeing this, swerved to cut him off, pumping its 7.62-millimeter bullets into the paddy at the ferocious rate of six thousand a minute - but, again Minh swerved from its firepath and doubled back on himself, throwing them off his track.

Inside the first helicopter, the American gunner seated beside the pilot bent intently over his mirror gunsight, and a little grin of satisfaction began to spread across his face. "Okay, buddy boy," he said quietly, "I think you've had all your fun for today."

The pilot slid the Huey down a slow, slanting track, dropping almost to the ground behind the tiring Vietnamese boy, and the gunner rapidly traversed the four big Gatling-style machine guns mounted on either side of the landing skids. The controls were finger-light, and the ammunition belts linked to the storage holds in the rear of the aircraft jumped and quivered like living serpents as the four guns began roaring again. Minh, twisting and turning with increasing desperation, looked around fearfully as the helicopter swooped down at his heels, and to his horror he saw that this time he wasn't going to be able to avoid the great torrent of bullets kicking up a wake of spray behind him. A second later he felt himself lifted bodily from the ground and then he fell limp in the muddy water, cut almost in two at the waist. As he lay there, vaguely conscious that parts of his bleeding body littered the ground all around him, he experienced through the burning pain an even deeper agony. Could his life really be ending? Could it really be over before he'd even started to become a hero of the liberation struggle like his father?

As Tuyet Luong slid down into the moist darkness of her escape tunnel she was astonished to find Ngo Van Dong himself waiting at the foot of the shaft. His face was tense and pale, and she stared at him, at a loss for words: such a senior commander, she well knew, normally stayed in a secure area far away from the action; and his presence there could only mean that something had gone badly wrong.

"Where is Minh?" He shouted the question loudly, his face disfigured by his anger and anxiety.

"Wasn't he supposed to stay hidden in the tree?"

"He joined the a.s.sault against my orders. One of the messengers saw him go. He must still be in the field."

"I didn't see him," said Tuyet Luong slowly. "But I think there was somebody who was cut off by the helicopters Dong pushed past her up the exit shaft before she had finished speaking, and when he crawled out into the bright sunlight of the field, all was ominously quiet. For a second or two he crouched motionless in the tunnel mouth, his head c.o.c.ked towards the sky - then he ran out into the paddy, scanning the few black-garbed bodies that lay half-submerged in the muddy water.

Only thirty yards from the edge of the field, he found Minh, his face and body reduced to little more than shapeless offal by the 7.62-millimeter rounds. He recognized him chiefly by the lovingly polished Garand rifle that was lying beside him, but it too, like the captured Armalite and everything else within a radius of several yards, was now stained with Minh's blood. As he stooped to pick up his son's mangled corpse, Dong heard the sudden beat of another HU 1-B's rotor beyond the trees of Hamlet Three; it had let down there in response to Staudt's last radio order to lift out the British television crew, and he saw it rising into view above the trees as he began stumbling back towards the tunnels bearing his wretched burden.

Inside the Huey, the co-pilot manning the attack weapons saw only an anonymous Vietnamese peasant in black pajamas hauling one of the dead bodies away towards a hole in the ground, and Naomi and her camera crew felt a fierce surge of heat as the twin rockets burst from the pods slung beneath the helicopter's skids. The gunner had targeted the weapons with unerring accuracy, and all those inside the Huey watched them explode with a hollow roar in the hank of the rice paddy. Ngo Van Dong was in the act of dragging his dead son into the mouth of a tunnel when he was. .h.i.t, and the rockets blasted both their bodies to fragments in an instant. A great geyser of white smoke and black earth spiraled upwards, obscuring the point of impact, and the tunnel that collapsed around them became their tomb.

6.

"The pride of a man can sometimes be his greatest a.s.set, Comrade Tuyet- but too often it's his worst enemy!" Dao Van Lat muttered the words fiercely in the quiet of the deserted command post, hut there was a break in his voice, and before he turned away from her, Tuyet Luong saw that his eyes were misting with tears. "If Comrade Dong hadn't been so determined to make his son a hero before he was ready, they might still both be with us here now!"

Tuyet sat white-faced at the table beneath the map, watching Lat pacing agitatedly back and forth across the beaten earth floor of the cellar; the ground above their heads shook occasionally with the impact of bombs that American T-28s, called in by the dying Captain Staudt, were still dropping, and the acrid gasoline stench of the blazing napalm was already seeping deep into the tunnel network. The two Liberation Army platoons that had taken part in the ambush had already dispersed safely through the subterranean escape shafts into the jungle, but Lat and Tuyet both knew that the dozen or so women and children who had been ordered to remain above ground in Hamlet Four could not have survived the saturation bombing.

"When I take the news to his family I know exactly what I'll find," said Lat, stopping before Tuyet and gazing down at her with a helpless expression in his eyes. "His younger son, 'Little Slug,' will be doing his duty 'looking after' his mother and sister and waiting happily for news of the battle - until now it's all been like a game to him. But then he'll see his mother begin weeping inconsolably and the rest of his life will be warped by what happened here today. His heart will grow heavy with hatred and the poison will have been pa.s.sed to another generation." He stopped and raised his head to listen as the distant rumble of the air attack began to die away; then he began pacing again. "I worked with Dong's father in the early days of the revolution and spent many years in prison with him. They're a courageous family who've suffered greatly, and it pains me to see their suffering continue." His voice rose in exasperation and he punched his right fist angrily into the palm of his other hand. "Especially as it all could have been avoided if I'd been more alert."

"But what could you have done, Comrade Pham?" asked Tuyet in surprise. "You couldn't have foreseen what would happen to Minh." - "I ignored a danger signal. I should have overruled Dong when I found out that he was letting pride cloud his judgment about his own son." Lat swung around and came to stand in front of her, again. "It's vital that we dedicate ourselves to our cause - but we shouldn't let it blind us to our own human needs. If we do, we could lose something more important than this war."

"But there's nothing more important than the war," protested Tuyet in an incredulous voice. "How can you say the war isn't important?"

"Of course the war's important - but we should always try to strike a balance with the other things in our lives." Lat fell silent and walked distractedly back and forth in front of her. Then he stopped and spoke again in a gentler voice. "A long while ago, Comrade Tuyet, I did something very foolish because I was too vain and too proud. I thought there was nothing more important to me than our cause, and I was foolish enough to think I could put myself beyond all normal feeling. As a result, I hurt somebody like you very deeply He let his right hand fall until it rested on her shoulder; at his touch she stiffened in her seat, holding herself rigid, and she didn't relax even when he began speaking again.

"I've rarely spoken of this, Comrade Tuyet, but I'm telling you because something about you reminds me of her. . . . She was beautiful and brave in just the way that you are." His voice broke with emotion and sank to a whisper. "I thought my love for her was distracting me from the revolution, you see, and I mutilated myself with a knife to put an end to what I thought of as my wasteful desires. But ever since then my dreams have been haunted by the faces of sons and daughters who might have been ours. Having no children, no offspring, I realize now, was too great a sacrifice to make. I regret what I did with all my heart and I always will."

Tuyet felt his hand tighten convulsively on her shoulder, and turned to find him gazing down at her with a look of deep compa.s.sion in his eyes. "But why do you speak to me of these things at a time like this?" she asked in a mystified voice.

"Because, comrade, I sense that you are making the same kind of mistake as I made. You have lost a beloved husband and your pain has been great. But without realizing it you are destroying yourself. In trying to stifle the pain, you've stifled all human feeling. If you continue to do that, you'll forget how to feel love and kindness. Hatred can devour you from within. Soon your life will become as arid as mine."

"Since my husband, Luong, was murdered I haven't dared allow myself to feel love for any living creature," said Tuyet savagely. "If I let myself weaken, somehow I know I'll only suffer some terrible new loss."

"Don't your children deserve your love, Comrade Tuyet?" he said carefully. "Don't they need you?"

"They are well cared for by their grandmother," she said fiercely. "If I let myself think of them I wouldn't be able to do what I have vowed to do - avenge Luong's death." Her eyes flashed and her voice rasped in her throat. "And I wouldn't be able to do what I did today!"

"What was that?" He moved around to face her again. "Tell me about it."

"I killed the Diemist lieutenant in cold blood - but if I'd let my feelings get in the way I might not have been able to do it."

"Why?"

Suddenly her lower lip was trembling. "Both his legs had been blown off at the waist by one of our mines. He was still conscious and as I bent over him to take his pistol he tried to speak. But no words came out - he could only make a gurgling noise. He was like me, Comrade Pham - a metis. I took his pistol and turned away, but then I heard the gurgling sound again. I looked around and saw him pointing to the pistol. I'll never forget the awful pleading look in his eyes. In battle you expect to find only hatred in the face of the enemy - but he really wanted me to help him die." She closed her eyes, and Lat saw tears squeeze from beneath her lids. A moment later her shoulders began shaking silently. "I shot him in the head with his own pistol just before the helicopters came. He didn't make any sound at all - he just rolled over on his side."

She choked on her last words and buried her face in her hands, wracked by a Fit of sobbing. Lat watched her for a moment, then reached out his hand and patted her shoulder consolingly. "Comrade Tuyet, this war will see many more tragedies yet before it's won - but you've done enough here. Let your agony pa.s.s now - today's horror may have been a blessing in disguise. With your education you could serve the Front better doing intelligence work. Take your children with you and go away from this region. I'll arrange a new post. Put the past behind you and try to look to the future."

She looked up at him, nodding mutely, then without warning she seized his hand in both of her own and pressed it against her tearstained cheek. "This is the first time I've wept since the day Luong died," she whispered. "The very first time."

7.

The. early morning sun of Tuesday, June it, 1963, flooded the streets of Saigon with dazzling yellow light. Without discrimination it illuminated the elegant, tree-shaded French boulevards, which were old, the high-rise, air-conditioned American apartment buildings that were brash, new and still rising, and the crowded shack and shanty slums huddled in the timeless habit of Asia along the city's narrow ca.n.a.ls and waterways. It shone, too, on yet another marching column of Buddhist demonstrators, and its radiance turned the saffron robes of the priests to s.h.i.+mmering mantles of gold. It was barely nine o'clock, and in the early glare, the bowed, shaven heads of the monks and nuns were indistinguishable as they shuffled along, pressing their palms together in the traditional pose that reflected the pa.s.sive, contemplative roots of their ancient faith.

Because most of them were barefooted, the four hundred demonstrators padded noiselessly out of the dusty lane that led from their paG.o.da onto Phan Dinh Phung, the central, north- south boulevard known under the French as the Rue Richaud Marching four abreast and carrying cloth banners attacking the Catholic government of President Diem, they headed for the heart of the city, hut although they pa.s.sed through streets filled with rush-hour traffic, their demonstration did not. excite special attention. Such demonstrations had become almost commonplace following an incident in Hue in early May; then, government troops had killed several Buddhists protesting against a government ban on the flying of their flag, and the sense of outrage among the normally quiescent Buddhist monks had sparked off a wave of protests throughout South Vietnam.. Only one timing distinguished the demonstration of June it from hundreds of others like it - half-a-dozen senior Buddhists were not marching on foot like the others but rode at the head of the column in a battered green Austin saloon car. Among them on the rear seat sat Thich Quang Duc, an una.s.suming monk in his early seventies whose pinched, bony features reflected the austere, ascetic life he had always led; straight-backed and unmoving, he stared fixedly ahead through the winds.h.i.+eld, his face composed in an expression of blank concentration, and to the few onlookers who stopped to watch the marchers go by, he appeared no different from the other bonzes seated beside him. But in the privacy of his thoughts Thich Quang Duc was preparing to endure voluntarily several minutes of the fiercest physical agony a man can suffer - an agony that he knew would be relieved only by his death.

As the procession moved slowly along Phan Dinh Phung, to calm his rising panic he reminded himself that he had spent his whole life practicing Thien, a philosophy and mode of living which gave a man the power to master his inner self and make his will implacable. Without being conditioned by any set of dogmatic beliefs, Thien demanded of its adherents rigorous techniques of diet, breathing, meditation and concentration, and became he had always been a devoted priest and pract.i.tioner, Thich Quang Duc knew that at that moment he was closer than ever before to attaining Satori, the cosmic awareness that was the goal of his religion. Hadn't all his deeds and thoughts since childhood been aimed at achieving this elusive state of perfection? Hadn't every act of devotion taken him another step along the path towards the ultimate moment of fulfillment that was now at hand? Mustering all his considerable powers of concentration, he willed his mind to dwell only on this thought to the exclusion of all else, and gradually his apprehension began to diminish. Fingering a string of fifty-Four holly oak seeds, he repeated over and over again the whispered mantra "Nam Mo Amida Buddha" - Return to Eternal Buddha - and as his lips formed and reformed the sacred phrase, a sense of peace and joy began flooding through him and eventually became so profound that he ceased to be aware of his surroundings.

To the bystanders at the curbside that morning, however, Thich Quang Duc remained anonymous and unremarked in the shadowy interior of the car - and even the car itself attracted little attention. The Scottish television cameraman working with Naomi Boyce-Lewis at first didn't bother to film the vehicle at all. Walking backwards at the head of the parade, still limping slightly from his Moc Linh punji wound, he concentrated instead on holding the brightly garbed figures of the marching monks in tight focus as they moved towards him, and at the junction where Phan Dinh Phung met Le Van Duyet, he dropped the camera from his shoulder briefly to rest. As he hand-cranked its clockwork mechanism, Naomi Boyce-Lewis moved up close beside him and spoke quietly in his ear.

"Be sure, Jock, won't you, to get a good shot of the car driving over the crossroads."

The Scot turned his perspiring face towards the reporter and rolled his eyes in exasperation. "The car? I've been doing my d.a.m.nedest to keep it out of shot up to now. A broken-down British jalopy like that doesn't exactly conjure up the timeless rituals of Buddhism, does it? In fact it beats me why we're filming this parade at all. It looks just like a hundred other Buddhist demos we've seen."

The reporter sighed and shook her head. "Jock, a Buddhist bonze doesn't come to my room in the Continental at six AM. every day to tell me 'something very important is about to happen.' Let's just take him at his word and film everything carefully, shall we? There are monks in the car too."

"Okay, Naomi, as long as it's understood I'm not paying for wasted footage." The Scot glanced at the soundman, who was busy picking up street noises on his directional microphone, and raised his eyebrows in a good-natured expression of complaint. Then he turned and began filming the march again, taking care this time to include the car.

The small crowd that gathered to watch the demonstration cross the busy intersection was mainly Vietnamese, but here and there among them, Naomi recognized some of the American wire service and newspaper journalists then resident in Saigon; it was obvious that hers had not been the only name on the Buddhist visiting list that morning, but she rioted with a little surge of satisfaction that no other television crew had shown up, so whatever the promised sensation turned out to be, her coverage would be exclusive. Inwardly she congratulated herself on the time she had spent cultivating the English-speaking monks at Xa Loi, the main Saigon paG.o.da, and to encourage jock to greater efforts she moved to his side again to point out that his would be the only television news camera present. As she stepped back onto the pavement, she felt a hand on her elbow and turned to find herself looking into the face of a smiling, dark-baited American who was holding out his hand in greeting.

"I'm Guy Sherman, foreign service officer, American Emba.s.sy - you must be Naomi Boyce-Lewis, the famous survivor of Moc Linh."

She studied the face intently for a moment; lean tanned, with a hard, determined mouth, it belonged to a man in his late thirties who made no secret of his high degree of physical self-a.s.surance, and because she sensed instinctively that such a man must hold a responsible post at the emba.s.sy which gave him access to high-level political information, she smiled warmly in response and allowed him to take her hand. "I'm surprised the safety of a mere English television journalist should even have come to the notice of someone like you, Mr. Sherman," she said lightly. "I thought you had your hands full trying to run a war and prop up your friend President Diem."

"You're right - the workload's killing lesser men. But perhaps you remember Lieutenant Gary Sherman? He's my nephew, and he talked a lot about 'this devastating English blonde' who kept her cool when all around her were losing theirs." He smiled directly into her eyes as he spoke, letting her see that she had aroused an immediate s.e.xual interest in him. "And let me say for the record that I go along with every word of young Gary's description of you."

Holding his gaze coolly, she inclined her head an inch in acknowledgment of the compliment. "Gary never spoke of his uncles - there wasn't time. But if he had I would have imagined them as older men."

"I was only twelve when Gary was born - I was a late twinkle in my father's eye, I guess." Guy Sherman's lean face creased in another grin. "But let's save my family history for another time, shall we? I happened to overhear you talking with your cameraman about how the bonzes gave you newspeople the nod today on this march. I'd like to have the opportunity to buy you a drink and hear some more about that sometime."

"Why does that interest you?"

Still smiling, Guy Sherman made a little dismissive gesture with his hands. "Would you believe that we're having a h.e.l.luva job at the emba.s.sy making any contact at all with the Buddhists? We can't do it openly because President Diem and his family see it as consorting with the enemy." He paused and glanced around quickly to see if they were overheard, then laid a hand on her arm. "It won't be a one-way trade, Miss Boyce-Lewis. Maybe I can give you one of two pointers in return to ease the ch.o.r.es of news gathering."

The lips of the English journalist parted in a little conspiratorial smile. "That sounds like a reasonable deal."

"Okay, how about eight o'clock this evening, then? On the terrace at the Continental? And please call me Guy At that moment her soundman touched her arm and interrupted them. "Look, Naomi - something odd's happening."

She turned to find that the car carrying the Buddhist bronzes had halted unexpectedly in the middle of the intersection. The marchers were moving past it, walking suddenly with greater purpose, and they quickly formed themselves into a ring that effectively cordoned off the junction. At the same time the monks alighted gravely from the green Austin and one of them raised its hood. Leaning inside he lifted into view a five-gallon plastic container filled with a dark liquid, then walked slowly towards the center of the intersection beside Thich Quang Duc. Another monk carried a cus.h.i.+on, and when they reached their chosen spot he placed it reverently on the asphalt surface of the road.

Thich Quang Duc lowered himself slowly onto the cus.h.i.+on in the yogic lotus posture, and when he had composed himself with his legs folded beneath him, he placed his hands, one on top of the other, in his lap. For several seconds he remained immobile, lost in the depths of meditation, then he opened his eyes and nodded once towards his helpers. The monk holding the plastic container immediately began splas.h.i.+ng its contents onto Thich Quang Duc's head, and the liquid coursed down his neck and shoulders, darkening his saffron robe and spreading out in a puddle all around him on the roadway. The faint morning breeze wafted the pungent fumes of the gasoline swiftly towards the crowd of onlookers on the pavements, and when they realized what they were about to witness, little m.u.f.fled gasps of horror broke from several throats.

"May the saints preserve us," breathed the Scottish cameraman as he continued filming beside Naomi. "This time they really mean business."

In an electric silence Thich Quang Due's helpers placed the empty plastic container on the ground a few feet away from him and retreated to join the circle of onlookers. For several seconds Thich Quang Duc himself remained perfectly still, sitting stiffly upright, then the crowd saw his lips move to frame one final mantra before his hands fluttered briefly in his lap.

The flames that spurted from his body as he struck the match smote the morning air with a hollow thump; twisting and fluttering in the breeze, they seemed at first to be dancing on the head and shoulders of the impa.s.sive monk without harming him, and only gradually did his face and robes begin to char and blacken inside the pillar of fire. But even then no utterance escaped his lips, and he remained unmoving in his cross-legged posture on the ground.

All around the circle, the other monks and nuns pressed their hands together in prayer and stared transfixed at the blazing figure; from time to time moans of anguish rose from their ranks, and when the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh became recognizable amidst the reek of gasoline, there were sounds of weeping among the Vietnamese crowds behind them. Some white- uniformed Saigon policemen with tears streaming down their faces tried to break through the cordon of monks to put out the flames but they were held back.

"Do you want to try voicing a piece to camera, Naomi, with the flames behind you?" asked the cameraman in a strangled whisper as he stopped to put in a fresh magazine of film. "These pictures are probably going to go right around the world."

For a second or two she stared at him aghast; the awful spectacle of the fiery suicide had left her dry-mouthed with horror, and the odor of roasting human flesh was beginning to bring on a feeling of nausea. "I can't, Jock - it's too d.a.m.ned awful, just film it straight and I'll do a 'voice-over' commentary later."

"But we may never get a better story than this in our whole lives, Naomi," he hissed, refocusing the camera with shaking hands. "This could make your face famous in five continents."

She turned round to stare with anguished eyes towards the blazing figure of Thich Quang Duc; the puddle of gasoline on the ground all around him that had ignited at the outset to produce a broad pyramid of fire had almost burned out, and the flames were now concentrating all their fury on the body of their victim. In their midst, the monk's blackened head made him look more like some primeval, mummified totem than a man, but still the rigorous self-control exercised by his living mind held his agonized body erect.

"Don't worry about what you'll look like or sound like, Naomi," persisted the cameraman in an undertone. "It won't hurt to be a bit emotional - the main thing is to be seen here."

"You're right, Jock!" She nodded towards the soundman, and when he handed her a microphone she moved swiftly to a position where the blazing body of the monk could be seen over her shoulder. Closing her eyes to compose her thoughts, she waited until she heard the whir of the camera, then opened them again and gazed steadily into the lens.

"Watching a man burn himself to death in public is an experience too awful to describe accurately in words," she said in a voice that trembled. "So I won't try - but the Buddhists of South Vietnam couldn't have chosen a more dramatic way of expressing the growing opposition to the government of President Diem, which they see as oppressive and corrupt. The monk has chosen to take his own life in a fountain of flame in Saigon because the Buddhists are convinced now that their country would be better served by a different government. And this horrifying scene should make America and the rest of the Western world think too - because the United States is now lending ma.s.sive military and economic support to the government here in a spreading war against Communism."

Naomi Boyce-Lewis paused and glanced around at Thich Quang Duc; in the extremes of agony his blackening body was beginning to twitch involuntarily from time to time, but still his fierce resolve held him upright in the lotus posture, and with the aid of a megaphone, one of the watching monks had begun to chant repeatedly in English and Vietnamese: "A Buddhist priest burns himself to death - a Buddhist priest becomes a martyr!" Cloth banners bearing the same slogans in Vietnamese and English were also now being unfurled by other monks, and Naomi read them quickly before turning back to the camera.

"Death by burning may seem to us to be a particularly barbaric and savage way to make a political protest - but it shouldn't be thought that South Vietnam's Buddhists don't know how to put their message across in the modern world. They were careful to ensure that a few selected Western journalists would be present here, myself among them - and those English banners and slogans make it clear their protest is as much directed at the ears and eyes of Was.h.i.+ngton as at their own government. But when all that's been said, standing here today still leaves me with one overwhelming feeling - a deep sense of revulsion and horror The moment she's finished speaking, she turned with professional deliberation to look again towards the dying monk, and the cameraman used his telephoto lens to move into a new close-up of the fiery figure. Almost ten minutes had pa.s.sed since Thich Quang Duc struck the match that had set his body ablaze, and at last he had begun to sway from side to side. New shrieks and moans of anguish rose from the watching crowd, then suddenly the monk's body toppled over backwards in the pool of flame. For several seconds his arms and legs jerked spasmodically and his fingers clutched vainly at the air beyond the shroud of fire enveloping him; then he flung his arms wide, as though in one last act of supplication, and his whole body shuddered convulsively before he finally lay still.

By the time the last of the flames had died away. a truck drew up carrying a simple coffin, but the rigidity of Thich Quang Duc's limbs, outstretched in his death agonies made it impossible for his corpse to be placed inside. After a hurried consultation, half-a-dozen monks removed their orange robes, bound them about the body and set off to carry their burden to the Xa Loi paG.o.da, a quarter of a mile away. The circle of demonstrators opened to let them pa.s.s, then they regrouped into a column and fell into step behind. As the procession wound its way through the heavy morning traffic, a bell in the paG.o.da began to toll a solemn death knell, and the crowds that had gathered at the intersection began drifting away, speaking in uneasy whispers of what they'd witnessed. As he moved off towards his emba.s.sy car, Guy Sherman stopped to touch Naomi lightly on the shoulder.

"That was a very impressive performance indeed," he said quietly.

She glanced around at him in puzzlement, uncertain of his meaning. "Are you talking about the Buddhist monk - or me?"

"Both of you," he said raising one eyebrow slightly. "And I'm looking forward more than ever now to talking to you tonight."

8.

By eight-fifteen that evening the terrace of the Continental Palace Hotel was filling up with its regular nightly crowd of Americans from the emba.s.sy, the aid agencies and the U.S. Military a.s.sistance Command. Most of the soldiers, still under orders not to flaunt their uniforms in public more than necessary, were dressed in civilian clothes, and here and there a few sleek middle-cla.s.s Vietnamese with government connections were talking earnestly with their white-skinned benefactors. Guy Sherman had arrived early to make sure of the table in the corner of the terrace where he could sit with his back to the wall and scan the sidewalks of Duong Tu Do - Freedom Street - as the old Rue Catinat had been renamed on the departure of the French; from that vantage point, too, he was able to watch the exits from the hotel without s.h.i.+fting in his seat, and he spotted the English television reporter the moment she stepped out onto the terrace. Her pale blond hair, normally pinned back tidily from her face, fell in soft waves to her shoulders, and as she came towards him he saw that she had forsaken her workday safari jacket and trousers for a fas.h.i.+onable suit of natural cream shantung that looked as if it might have been tailored in Paris. She moved with an easy a.s.surance, obviously aware that many male eyes were turning to follow her, and she paused only once to talk to a waiter. By the time she reached Guy's table he was on his feet holding one of the deep wickerwork chairs for her, and he smilingly waved aside her murmured apology for lateness.