Saigon: A Novel Part 32

"Don't worry about it - those fifteen minutes gave me the chance to work out why you choose to stay here in this crumbling French hotel when you could have a nice modern air-conditioned room at the Caravelle on the other side of the square. I've decided that it has to be the faded red damask and the cracked chandeliers - they must bring back happy memories of imperial grandeur for all you dyed-in-the-wool European colonialists, don't they?"

He smiled teasingly as he spoke, but to his surprise she sat down without responding; for a moment she glanced around the crowded terrace, acknowledging the friendly waves she received from the huddle of resident American foreign correspondents seated at a distant table. But when she turned to look at Guy, her face was serious again.

"The last letter I ever received from my father was written on Continental Palace notepaper," she explained, her tone distant. "He wrote to me from here the day before he was killed in the autumn of 1945. I was nine at the time. and I'd been waiting for five years for him to come home - I suppose that's the main reason why I stay here."

The smile faded instantly from the American's face. "Naomi, I'm sorry, I didn't know, I hope you'll forgive my undiplomatic gaffe."

A waiter arrived at the moment with a chilled vin blanc ca.s.sis that she had obviously ordered herself on the way to the table and she sipped it for a moment in silence. Then she sighed and smiled wearily at him. "I'm sorry too .- I didn't mean to sound quite so offensive." She closed her eyes and pressed her fist against the s.p.a.ce between her eyebrows. "Today's events haven't left me with much in the way of emotional reserves, I'm afraid."

"There's no need to apologize at all," said Guy hastily. "You must have had a h.e.l.luva time. Did you get your film out okay?"

She nodded. "I went to the expense of sending my sound recordist out to Hong Kong with the spools hidden under his s.h.i.+rt - I couldn't risk the film being confiscated at the airport. But ever since the story broke, my London newsroom's been clamoring for more explanatory commentary by telephone."

"They're not the only ones. The stills taken by one of the wire service men here have already hit the front pages of the late editions back home - and every d.a.m.ned office in the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon is screaming frantically for authoritative explanations."

Naomi continued to sip her drink without taking her eyes from his face. "And what's your emba.s.sy telling them?"

He glanced about him with studied casualness for a second or two, then peered intently into his gla.s.s of bourbon. "I wish there was a clear and simple answer to that question - but there isn't."

"I thought you said this morning, Guy, that this was to be a two-way trade." In using his Christian name for the first time, she seemed to inject a subtle hint of intimacy in to her voice, and he looked up to find her smiling archly at him.

"That's right, Naomi, I did," he said slowly. "But this may be one instance where your guess is as good as mine. Our so-called experts on oriental religions in the emba.s.sy don't even seem to be able to agree among themselves on such simple d.a.m.ned things as exactly how many Buddhists there are in this country. You can take your pick on any number between twenty and eighty percent of the population - then every figure will be qualified by talk of Confucianism, Taoism and the wors.h.i.+p of spirits. The one thing they seem to be sure about is that there are only a million and a half Vietnamese Catholics - and most of them are either in the government or the officer corps of the army." He sighed loudly in his exasperation. "What are you telling your viewers in England?"

"I spent hours haunting Xa Loi and one or two other smaller paG.o.das and talked to several venerable old monks who weren't seeking out Western journalists. One of them told me that ritual suicide has never been seen as an act of despair in Vietnam - it's traditionally been an honorable and unanswerable means of proving virtue and demonstrating the guilt of a more powerful opponent. He reminded me too that a great river doesn't rise in flood because it's pulled from the front - it's the ma.s.sive weight of water pus.h.i.+ng from behind that unleashes the torrent. When I asked him exactly what he meant by that, lie just gave me a toothy smile and said Buddhist priests would never try to lead the people unless they were absolutely certain that their feelings had already reached a flashpoint."

"And did you build your piece around that information?"

Naomi nodded. "Yes, I think President Diem's trigger-happy brother probably did the government a great disservice when he rolled his tanks over those few Buddhist marchers complaining about the banning of their flag in Hue. It seems to have sent apathetic Buddhists flooding back into the paG.o.das in their thousands and brought to a head all the resentment that has been building up against Diem for years. Some of the bonzes. told us privately weeks ago they were planning a public suicide. Of course we could all be wrong, even now - the Viet Cong might somehow have stage-managed the whole business. But I suppose we'd need a friendly CIA man to tell us the score on that."

She smiled mischievously, shrugging her shoulders out of her jacket at the same time, and Guy saw that she wore a sheer silk blouse beneath it; in the act of turning to hang the jacket on her chairback, the thin stuff of the blouse stretched tight across the points of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and the filmy lace and shoulder straps of her bra.s.siere gleamed tantalizingly white suddenly against her suntanned skin. In that moment he was seized by a powerful urge to see her beautiful, disdainful face clenched tight in the extremes of s.e.xual abandon, to hear her well-bred English voice moaning and gasping with pleasure beneath him, and he drew in a long, slow breath as he waited for her to turn and face him again. When she did, he looked directly into her eyes and lowered his voice.

"So far, Naomi, there's no evidence of Viet Cong involvement at all - although it's sure as h.e.l.l the kind of trick they'd like to pull." He paused and let the corners of his mouth relax in a confidential smile. "But if we get anything On it, let me a.s.sure you you'll be the first to know - unattributably, of course."

"Of course." She held his gaze as she drained her gla.s.s and allowed him to take it from her hand when it was empty. While he summoned the waiter, she stared thoughtfully out into the traffic-filled plaza surrounding the old Opera House which had been converted to house the National a.s.sembly. The nightly swarm of cars and motor scooters that had flooded into Saigon under the American economic aid programs were filling the humid night air with their acrid exhaust fumes; many of the scooters were being ridden by slender Vietnamese girls, and the split skirts of their gossamer-light ao dai fluttered in their wake like the wings of b.u.t.terflies. All along Tu Do she could see more evidence of change; gaudy neon signs in English pointed the way to countless dimly lit bars with names like "The Shack," "The Capitol," "Fifth Avenue" and through their open doors the raucous jangle of Western pop music could be heard day and night. In their gloomy interiors she knew that painted Vietnamese bar girls waited to welcome the growing population of American GIs whenever they took time off from fighting the Viet Cong, and she found herself wondering how different her father would have found the French colonial capital he'd last known in 1945. Would he even recognize the tawdry, honky-tonk hybrid city that was now part Asian, part Western but becoming increasingly corrupted, it seemed to her, by American aid and spending power.

"Here's to Anglo-American cooperation, Naomi!" Guy's voice broke into her thoughts, and she turned back to the table to find him holding a new drink in his hand. Picking up the vin blanc ca.s.sis that a waiter had just placed in front of her, she clinked her gla.s.s against his.

"Long may it thrive." She returned his smile and fumbled in her handbag until she found a small sheet of Continental Palace notepaper on which she'd written the name of the Buddhist monk who'd alerted her that morning to the suicide. She placed it face-down on the table, still smiling, and pushed it towards Guy but didn't release it. "Here's the first installment from England but before I part with it I'd like to ask you one or two questions."

"Fire away. As many as you like."

"Why do you need my sources so badly? You must have your own at the emba.s.sy."

"Sure we have some --- but this situation is so d.a.m.ned volatile and not a little unfathomable. So every lead we can get our hands on could be vital."

"But doesn't the confusion make you and your colleagues a little uneasy sometimes? Don't events like today's make you worry about the wisdom of America's role here?"

"Naomi, we don't set policy at the emba.s.sy. We just try to supply a clear picture of what's happening here. It's for others in Was.h.i.+ngton to make the decisions- you know that."

"But that doesn't mean you don't have opinions."

"Of course not. But believe me, everybody in the emba.s.sy is one hundred percent behind the military effort we're making here - especially me. I'm sure deep in my bones what we're doing is right." He put down his drink and leaned earnestly towards her across the table. "What's happening here, Naomi, is part of a worldwide Communist offensive. They call it a 'war of liberation' in their doublespeak - but they're using the same kind of subversion and infiltration techniques here as they're using all over the world. This way the Communists in Moscow and Peking can chip away at the West's security country by country without risking a major confrontation. Unless we make a firm stand in South Vietnam and anywhere else they choose to fight, the West could go under without a single missile being fired or a single border being crossed. Communism's got to be stopped don't make the mistake, Naomi, of thinking this isn't an important war. It might even be more important than World War Two."

'I don't think anyone in Whitehall would disagree with any of that, Guy - they wouldn't work up as much enthusiasm and conviction as you do, of course, but they would go along with the general philosophy." She smiled and implied admiration of his energy by hr tone of voice. "But what I was really wondering is whether a war like this can be won - especially after my experience at Moc Linh."

"Moc Linh wasn't typical," said Guy quickly. "The war's being fought on two fronts and being won on both - that's an inside view, believe me, from someone with access to all the important data. We're keeping the Viet Cong on the move now with fast deployment of the ARVN troops in helicopters and armored rivercraft. You've seen the Hueys with their 7.62-millimeter mini- guns and rockets, you saw the T-28s and the effectiveness of our artillery and napalm attacks -- we're smoking them out fast now with our superior technology. And on the political front we've got ten million people safely walled up now inside the same kind of fortified hamlets that you British used to win your ten-year war against Communism in Malaya. You've seen the bamboo palisades, haven't you? Don't they look a little like the old cavalry stockades out West? Well take it from me, Naomi, we're winning out here in the East as surely as we won in the old West,"

"But the French fought here for eight years and killed possibly a million Viet Minh and still they lost. Doesn't that ever give you sleepless nights?"

"The French didn't light the right way, Naomi. And they didn't have our technology. What's more they were colonials. We Americans, remember, were the first nation to throw off the colonial yoke. We're not tainted with a colonial past." He rolled his eyes humorously. "Funny how easily you English forget that."

"Perhaps none of us think enough about history."

Guy shook his head emphatically. "I don't think that's true. I believe worrying too much about history impedes action. Determination and the will to act are the vital ingredients in a situation like this. Those two qualities are what sets America apart. I guess that's the chief thing my father taught me. He's represented Virginia in the United States Senate for over forty years now living by those principles."

"But 'determination and the will to act' aren't bringing home the bacon, are they, according to those gentlemen over there?" She nodded in the direction of the resident American correspondents. "They've been out on a lot more patrols than I have, and they're not sending glowing reports back home to their editors, are they?"

Guy glanced briefly towards the youthful group of American journalists and his expression hardened. "There's more than one war going on in Saigon, Naomi, unfortunately. Our press corps and the emba.s.sy are barely on speaking terms."

"Why's that?"

"They're probably friends of yours, so I'd better choose my words carefully. Let's just say we suspect they look for bad news - sensational news all the time because that's the stuff that they think's more likely to win them a Pulitzer Prize. They love nothing better than to write slanted stories about how badly the war's going and how tyrannical the Diem government is."

"Is that why you're so set on cultivating my friends.h.i.+p, Guy?" She smiled faintly as she spoke to take the sting out of the remark. "Do you hope I at least will tell it the way your emba.s.sy wants it told?"

He paused in the act of lifting his drink to his lips and looked at her thoughtfully; then his rugged face softened in a half smile. "You're not only a very beautiful and determined woman, Naomi - you're obviously a very perceptive one too. Sure, the emba.s.sy's got an interest in seeing the news look right- seeing it told the way it really is. But I promised you, didn't I, that if you help me, I'll help you. That's the way I want it to be - and if along the way we become good friends, I won't object to that."

She brushed a lock of hair from her eyes with one hand and smiled enigmatically. "Neither will I."

Without taking his eyes from hers, he placed his middle linger on the slip of paper on which her hand still rested and drew it across the table. She watched him for a moment, but before he could turn it over she reached out and covered his hand with her own.

"Just one more thing, Guy," she said softly. "The information you give me will be unattributable - but the same thing must always go for anything coming from me to you. That name and address are given in the strictest confidence."

"That goes without saying." When she leaned back in her seat he folded the paper without looking at it and slipped it into an inside pocket of his jacket. Then he drained his gla.s.s and stood up. "I've enjoyed our talk, Naomi. I hope we'll get to see a lot of one another."

He let his gaze linger on her for a moment longer, then walked quickly away down the terrace steps into the evening crowds thronging Tu Do. Before she'd finished her drink the little knot of American reporters broke up and began to depart. They smiled at her as they pa.s.sed her table and the last one, the young correspondent of a major wire service, stopped beside her and pulled his sungla.s.ses from his pocket. Turning up his jacket collar around his ears, he put on the gla.s.ses and glanced exaggeratedly about the terrace before bending to speak to her in an undertone.

"Be most careful, Miss Boyce-Lewis," he hissed in a comic foreign accent. "We all suspect Mr. Sherman is a spook. We thought you ought to know - for your own safety!"

She smiled broadly at the pantomime act of secrecy. "A spook?" The journalist hunched his shoulders higher around his ears and leaned closer. "Counterinsurgency specialist, Special Forces liaison - all that nasty, shadowy stuff the CIA gets up to out here. You've been warned, Miss Boyce-Lewis."

"There's no need to worry," she whispered. "I'd already worked that out for myself."

The American removed the gla.s.ses and raised his eyebrows high in feigned astonishment. Then he grinned again and hurried away to catch up his colleagues, walking bent double across the crowded terrace in, a Groucho Marx crouch.

9.

The high-ceilinged, marble halls of the Gia Long Palace were cool and shadowy in contrast to the throbbing midday heat of central Saigon, but when he stepped in through the portalled front entrance, Guy Sherman removed his dark gla.s.ses only long enough for his U.S. Emba.s.sy pa.s.s to be inspected. As soon as it was returned to him by a narrow-eyed soldier of the American- trained Vietnamese Special Forces unit that served as the presidential bodyguard, he replaced the gla.s.ses again immediately and trotted briskly up the wide marble staircase to the second floor. President Ngo Dinh Diem's office, he knew, was situated one staircase higher, on the third floor; furnished simply in the austere tradition of the Annamese mandarinate with a desk, a hard teak bed, bookshelves and a doc.u.ment table, it served as a bedroom, dining room, and office for the withdrawn bachelor who had been South Vietnam's head of state for nine years. There he received all his official Vietnamese Visitors, but only those few selected foreigners, including Central Intelligence Agency officers like Guy Sherman, whom he wished to meet privately. The grandeur of the state reception room on the ground floor over which the French governor of Cochin-China had originally presided, he reserved for formal foreign guests.

But on this occasion the CIA man went no farther than the second floor, where the Supreme Counselor to the President, his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, had his office, and outside its door he was subjected to a careful body search by a white-uniformed Vietnamese Special Forces major. Nhu, a ruthless Machiavellian intriguer by instinct, suspected everybody else spent as much time as he did embroiled in secret political plots and counterplots, and only when the unsmiling soldier was satisfied that the American carried no concealed weapon did he show him into a room that was several times larger than the president's. It was decorated with the stuffed heads of tiger buffalo and deer shot, Guy presumed, around Dalat, the favorite hunting grounds of the president's brother, and on one wall hung an imposing life- sized portrait in oils of a proud Vietnamese beauty dressed in a sheath like ao dai; to Guy, the painter seemed to have exaggerated the essential characteristics of his subject, making her pet.i.te figure dramatically full-breasted and over-sensual, and she had been given also the imperious, flas.h.i.+ng eyes of a stylized Peking opera villainess; Nhu himself, who was seated behind an enormous black lacquer desk, wore tight-fitting black trousers and a pale short-sleeved s.h.i.+rt of yellow silk, and he didn't trouble to look up as Guy approached. Standing before the desk, the American saw that he was reading from a buff-colored file bearing the printed t.i.tle "So Nghien Cuu Xa Hoi Chinh Tri," and he knew enough Vietnamese to recognize the euphemistic name of the "Social and Political Research Service" - South Vietnam's notorious secret police organization of which Nhu was the head. Looking more closely, Guy was able to make out his own name typewritten beneath the red "Top Secret" cla.s.sification stamp in the right-hand corner, and when Ngo Dinh Nhu finally glanced up, his thin smile indicated that the revelation had not been accidental.

"So, Mr. Sherman, your father brought the family here to hunt in our jungles in the 'twenties - and your eldest brother was tragically killed. How unfortunate - or was it carelessness?" He spoke French in a low, rasping voice, but the question was obviously not posed in any expectation of receiving an answer and Guy remained silent while the Vietnamese lit a cigarette. "Another brother of yours has also had cause to return here on a number of occasions, I believe, and is the author of an obscure historical work on our country. No doubt you've benefited from his scholarly insights - is that why the CIA chose you, Mr. Sherman, to inquire into how we're intending to react to the Buddhist outrage?"

Guy, still standing, since he had not been invited to sit, studied Nhu's pale, venomous features as he considered his reply; once he must have been sharply handsome in the manner of an Asian matinee idol, but now, at fifty-two, the skin of his face, stretched unnaturally tight across prominent cheekbones, had become sallow and prematurely wrinkled as a result of his opium-smoking habits. His expression remained fixed in an icy smile, his eyes glittering with an unnatural brightness, and Guy decided that rumors that he also used heroin were probably true as well.

"My brother Joseph confines himself exclusively to academic studies on Vietnam's past these days, monsieur counselor," said Guy, choosing his words in French with care. "Like any other foreign service officer I'm concerned only with the present. We try to provide policymakers at home with reliable information - I don't imagine you've forgotten the war in your country is judged to be of vital strategic interest to the United States."

"I've sometimes thought it might be better for us Vietnamese if it weren't," replied Nhu, his smile frozen and unchanging. "I've just been informed an hour ago that your military commanders have ordered all U.S. advisers to be withdrawn from units sent to control the Buddhists. You don't seem to realize that dying for a cause does not make it just - you don't seem to be able to grasp that the Buddhists are merely dupes of the Communists!"

"If you have reliable evidence to support that contention, I'd be glad to pa.s.s it to the U.S. amba.s.sador immediately. Meanwhile we've got to a.s.sume the problems are unrelated. The amba.s.sador's already told your brother, I believe, how concerned Was.h.i.+ngton is that the Buddhist trouble might destabilize your country to such an extent that the military effort is undermined. At the end of that road, American troops here could be endangered."

Nhu stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray with a languid movement of his hand, then selected another one immediately from a tortoisesh.e.l.l box on the desk. When he'd lit it, the mirthless smile reappeared on his face once more. "Mr. Sherman, I'm glad you've come here today. An informal meeting of this kind with a man like you allows me to air my intimate thoughts in a relaxed way. With your amba.s.sador there is so much reliance on formality. Please sit down and make yourself comfortable." He waved with mock affability towards a chair beside the desk, and Guy lowered himself into it. The Vietnamese gazed at him intently for a moment, then his false smile deepened. "You see, Mr. Sherman, I've been seriously wondering whether I ought to persuade my brother to dispense with American military help altogether. Strictly between ourselves I can tell you that the French are offering now to facilitate contacts for us with Hanoi - no doubt to further their own selfish economic interests in our country. But just as Was.h.i.+ngton talks to Moscow, I suddenly thought: 'Why should Saigon not talk to Hanoi?' We shouldn't forget, should we, that alternatives to American solutions exist?"

Guy drew in his breath slowly. The threat in the slyly veiled remark was unmistakable; if the intention to negotiate with Hanoi had been declared openly to the American government, it would, as Nhu obviously appreciated, have had the effect of a diplomatic bombsh.e.l.l and would greatly embarra.s.s the United States. "We talk to Moscow because we're not at war with them," replied Guy expressionlessly. "Our troops are here because Saigon is at war with Hanoi. It might be worth reflecting on that difference before you make up your mind."

Nhu gazed steadily at the American, still smiling, but didn't reply, and at that moment on the other side of the door behind him there was the sudden sound of fast-moving, female footsteps. The angry click of heels on a marble floor grew rapidly louder, then suddenly the door flew back on its hinges and a tiny figure swept into the room; glancing up, Guy noticed with a start that the woman in the portrait on the wall had come dramatically to life. Dressed in a dazzling ao dai of primrose yellow silk splashed with brilliant green fronds of weeping willow, Madame Nhu radiated an electric vitality. The dress clung to the dramatic curves of her body like a second skin, and her face had been artfully made up to emphasize her dark upswept brows, the high hollows of her Asiatic checks. As he stared at her, Guy modified his opinion of the portrait painters work; he had not caricatured his subject at all but had conveyed a faithful likeness. Madame Nhu had begun pouring out a shrill torrent of words in French as soon as she entered the room, and she waved a sheaf of American and foreign newspapers furiously at her husband as she reached his side.

"Look at these! The American photographers must have bribed that monk to barbecue himself for their cameras." She flung the papers violently on the desk in front of her husband. "It could only have been a Communist-inspired plot!" While Nhu leafed quickly through the newspapers, his wife glared furiously over his head at Guy, and he noticed then that her costume differed from the traditional ao dai in one respect: instead of a high collar that fitted demurely under chin, it had been designed with a scooped decollete neckline that drew added attention to her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and her expression showed that she was fully conscious of the impact of her provocative appearance. "Or perhaps, Monsieur Sherman," she said in the same angry tone "the CIA itself is plotting to provoke a coup) d'etat through the Buddhists."

Guy s.h.i.+fted uneasily in his seat; he had heard many secondhand accounts of Madame Nhu's rages and her highly charged s.e.xuality and had tended to dismiss them as exaggerations of the truth, but seeing her in the flesh fur the first time he realized that she more than lived up to her reputation. She continued to glare challengingly at him as she waited for his answer, but before he could frame a reply Nhu raised his head from the papers to smile am him again. "If the CIA should try to do that, our response would be simple. To protect ourselves we should have to withdraw our forces on a large scale from the Mekong delta to garrison Saigon."

"That sounds to me as though you're threatening the United States with your own defeat in the war," said Guy in an incredulous voice. "Does that make any sense?"

Nhu's raddled features hardened, and the smile disappeared altogether for the first time. "The prestige of the United States is irrevocably committed here, Monsieur Sherman. I can't speak for my brother, but my wife and I understand the American mentality better than you think. If you lose here, if you desert the country you've aided since 1954, what will American support be worth elsewhere in the world? Wouldn't there be a universal crisis of confidence among your allies? Americans love to be winners; they're simple people who admire above all else mindless physical vitality and winning-whether in games or in war. The French are subtler, they have much greater intellect - that's why I prefer France to the United States."

"Americans are certainly simple in one respect," said Guy calmly. "We know what we stand for - we don't s.h.i.+ft our ground easily. Here we support whatever helps the war effort - and whatever interferes with it, we oppose. We're not in business to see wars lost to Communism."

"But you'd like to see us give in and lose the war against the Buddhists!" Madame Nhu planted her hands on her hips and set her feet apart in a defiant stance; although she wore three-inch stiletto-heeled shoes of emerald green leather from Paris, she was still not much more than five feet tall, and she spat her words out with the ferocity of an angry cat. "The only way for our family and our government to regain the support of the population is to smash the Buddhists! I you've come here to find out what our att.i.tude to the Buddhists is, monsieur, let me tell you this: if another bonze wishes to burn himself to death, we'll gladly supply the gasoline and a match."

"By alienating the Buddhists aren't you effectively turning the whole country against you? Wouldn't it be easier, as our amba.s.sador has suggested to your brother-in-law, to admit the Hue shootings were not ordered from Saigon - and offer the victims some compensation?"

"The Americans are all Ivanhoes! You always favor the underdog - even when you're not sure who the underdog is! If we appease them there'll be no end to the Buddhists' demands! Appeas.e.m.e.nt would be interpreted as a sign of weakness, and we don't intend to commit suicide just to appease them." The eyes of the Vietnamese woman flashed, and she tossed her head contemptuously. "If they wish to barbecue another monk, I personally will clap my hands!"

"In the democratic countries of the world you'll lose all sympathy if you always crush your opponents by force." Guy looked down at the man behind the desk as he spoke. "Have you thought of that?"

"The Communists are enough opposition right now," rasped Nhu. "When we've won the war - that will be the time to consider whether we can play the game of democracy with legal opposition groups. Perhaps we might do better to eliminate from our ranks all those trained by sentimental Americans - this would make our forces stronger!"

"I don't know what your informers are telling you," said Sherman quietly. "But the self-sacrifice of Thich Quang Duc hasn't horrified only the American public. It's affected a lot of ordinary Vietnamese deeply too. More than one houseboy has told his American employer in Saigon that this proves the government of President Diem is bad."

"You'd be better advised not to listen to the prattle of houseboys," said Nhu, watching the American thoughtfully through the smoke of his cigarette. "But I don't really think I have to tell you that. You've wisely come to my office to seek enlightenment and not gone to the third floor." He raised his eyes significantly to the ceiling and the office of the president, above them. "At least the CIA understands now where real power resides. My brother, you see, is unfortunately afflicted by your disease - the desire to conciliate and appease. He wishes, as the French like to say, to have 'a circle with corners.' He wants everyone shaking hands, no bloodshed." He paused and spoke more slowly for emphasis. "But we'll make sure he doesn't carry through such a foolish policy. And if necessary we wouldn't hesitate to mount a coup against him if he disagrees with our advice."

Madame Nhu leaned forward suddenly and brought a tiny fist cras.h.i.+ng down onto the lacquered desk top. "Yes! We'll smash the Buddhists! Smash them, make no mistake about that." She gazed at the American, her eyes blazing, her tiny frame shaking with the ardor of her words. "No matter what the rest of the world thinks of us."

For a moment there was a silence in the room. Then Nhu s.h.i.+fted impatiently in his chair. "So, Monsieur Sherman, I think you have some idea of our position now, yes? But about the CIA's att.i.tude we're not so sure. Is it turning against us - becoming a Buddhist sympathizer?"

Guy sighed wearily. "I get a little tired of reminding people the CIA doesn't have a policy, monsieur counselor. The Agency serves the U.S. government by gathering information. I'm here because we wish to understand your thinking. We know your influence and the influence of Madame Nhu on the president are of vital importance. We want to keep our lines of communication to you open."

"But sometimes to keep channels of communication functioning smoothly, Monsieur Sherman, a demonstration of goodwill is vital," said Nhu sourly. "Otherwise we might find it impossible to push unwelcome thoughts about you from our heads."

"I'd antic.i.p.ated something like that. Americans can be good at reading character, too." Guy smiled suddenly and reached into an inside pocket of his jacket. Taking out a folded sheet of paper, he placed it on the desk in front of Nhu, then rose and walked to the door. He paused with one hand on the doork.n.o.b and looked back to find Madame Nhu peering over her husband's shoulder at the sheet of Continental Palace notepaper. "That's the name of the monk who tipped off the British television crew - and probably the rest of the foreign press corps as well. I thought you might be interested to have it."

As he turned to close the door behind him, Guy saw Madame Nhu take the sheet of paper eagerly from her husband, and Nhu began smiling his cold humorless smile once more.

10.

In the fading light of a soft August evening the hewn granite stonework of the Cornell University buildings at Ithaca, New York, had taken on a hallowed, ancient air; the high, neo-Gothic gables were casting chasms of dark shadow across the tree-lined lawns, and the muted trills of birds preparing to roost for the night deepened the mellow tranquility of the deserted, vacation- time campus. Only Joseph Sherman's long-striding figure disturbed the stillness when he emerged from the main entrance of Uris Hall, which since 1950 had housed the Department of Far Eastern Studies' Southeast Asia Program; he had been conducting a vacation seminar, and as he headed across the dappled gra.s.s towards one of the faculty houses, there was a certain restless agitation in his step that suggested he had never been able to reconcile himself fully to the reflective, unhurried ways of the academic world. Although he was in his early fifties, his fair hair was flecked only lightly with gray; lean, broad-shouldered and upright, he had retained the bearing of the athlete he had been in his youth, but the habitual frown he wore and his tightly drawn mouth hinted at tensions beneath the surface that were other than physical. In front of his door, his frown deepened suddenly as his eye fell on the latest edition of the New York Times; set in the kind of heavy type reserved for stories of major importance and spread across four columns of the front page, its main headline proclaimed: "South Vietnam's Crisis Deepens - Diem's Forces Raid PaG.o.das" and he picked up the newspaper quickly and began scanning the story while opening the door.

Inside, his attention was diverted momentarily by an envelope lying on the hail table where his cleaner had left it; it was edged with red and blue airmail stripes, and the handwriting and the Saigon postmark told him immediately that it was a letter from his son Gary. He stopped reading the news story long enough to tuck it into his jacket pocket, then wandered distractedly into a sitting room decorated exclusively with oriental furnis.h.i.+ngs. Chinese rugs covered the floors, inlaid lacquer paintings and calligraphy scrolls from the Imperial City of Hue hung on the walls, and several screens bearing Annamese dragon motifs were crowded among ta.s.seled brocade divans that once had graced the homes of mandarin courtiers in Peking. Every table and sideboard bore cl.u.s.ters of Vietnamese porcelain, jade figurines, gilded bodhisattvas or incense burners, and several sloe-eyed porcelain figures of life size were draped with collections of brilliant-hued court robes from Indochina and Thailand. But standing in the center of the room, holding the newspaper, Joseph seemed for once oblivious to the art objects he had collected so fastidiously during his years in the Far East. According to the news agency dispatch from Saigon datelined August 21, hundreds of armed soldiers and police had stormed into the Xa Loi paG.o.da and other Buddhist temples during the night, and Joseph shook his head in disbelief as he read through the details: several monks were believed to have been killed, hundreds had been dragged off to prison, and President Diem had declared martial law. Tanks and armored cars had taken up position at major intersections in Saigon, the wire service reported, and troops were patrolling the streets everywhere. In an official statement, the president's brother Ngo Dinh Nhu had described the Buddhists as "Reds in yellow robes" and accused their leaders of plotting to organize a coup d'etat.

When he had finished reading, Joseph flung the newspaper aside with a m.u.f.fled curse and because the room was beginning to grow dark he switched on a silk-shaded lamp before tugging the airmail letter from Gary out of his pocket. The handwriting on the envelope, like Gary himself, was neat, precise, military, and the letter inside had been penned on the headed, airmail-weight notepaper of the Caravelle Hotel. To read it Joseph sat down by the lamp, and he scanned each line with unconcealed anxiety as though he feared the pages might contain information he desperately hoped not to find.

"Dear Dad," the letter began, I guess I was pretty surprised to get your letter after all these years of silence between us. My reactions at first were "mixed," I must admit - for reasons which are maybe still too painful to go into in detail. For a day or two I swore to myself I wouldn't answer you at all but after I'd read it a few times I. think I started to realize that maybe I ought to be glad you cared enough to write at all after the things I said to you during our last painful meeting at the museum. I also started to realize as well that it would be brainless to turn my back on someone with as deep a knowledge of this country as you have - especially when it's becoming impossible to understand what the h.e.l.l's going on around here.

So when I got a much-delayed weekend pa.s.s to Saigon, I brought your letter with me so that I could do my bit to help along the thaw. I also decided that for the time being at least I'd let sleeping dogs lie as you wisely did in your letter and keep off the ticklish subject of you, Mom arid the past. Let me just say that with the pa.s.sage of time I've come to regret a little the ferocity of some of the things I said at the museum. As I grow older I guess I'm beginning to realize that n.o.body's all bad or all good and that there are almost always two sides to every question. Now that I've got that off my chest I'm going to stick to asking you a few dumb questions and telling you l.u.s.t how G.o.dd.a.m.ned hard the soldier's life is out here. As a precaution I'm also dropping this into an anonymous mailbox down the Street rather than submit it to the normal censors.h.i.+p channels. Having the chance to do that of course is something akin to being in heaven right now. The civilized delights of this exotic city are very welcome after another six weeks slogging through the paddies chasing the G.o.dd.a.m.ned Viet Cong. I was beginning to think my feet and legs would stay permanently black from the mud but now the odd gla.s.s of iced beer is doing wonders for restoring my morale - to say nothing of the gorgeous Vietnamese girls in their flimsy. Figure-hugging outfits.

And while we're on that subject don't be too surprised, will you, I'll come home some day with a slant-eyed maiden on my arm? The girls here as you must know are a sight for sore eyes although I can a.s.sure you of one thing - it won't be anyone like the president's so-called first lady, Madame Nhu. She's maybe one h.e.l.l of a looker but she's known around here now as the "Dragon Lady" because she's just banned taxi dancing, the "twist," prost.i.tution, divorce, contraception, abortion, c.o.c.kfighting - in fact every d.a.m.ned thing that makes life worth living for the average Vietnamese man. Rumor has it that a foreign amba.s.sador who was her lover threw her over in favor of a taxi dancer and in accordance with the "h.e.l.l-bath-no-fury-like-a- woman-scorned" principle, she shut down all the dancing shops as an act of revenge. I wouldn't go on about all this, I)ad, if it didn't lead me to my first dumb question: why in heaven's name did we decide to go to bat in the first place for a government headed by people like the "Dragon Lady" her husband and her brother-in-law? The way they're handling the Buddhist, for instance, has got us all baffled. While we spend weeks on end up to our a.s.ses in mud in the delta trying to win the war, they seem h.e.l.l-bent on losing it for us in Saigon and the other cities. The South Vietnamese troops in my Unit have taken to wearing little patches of yellow cloth supposedly cut from the robes used to carry the body of that Buddhist monk who burned himself to death. This, they tell me, demonstrates their support for the Buddhists who're trying to overthrow the government they're fighting for! What's more, Buddhist and Catholic officers are refusing to eat together - can you make sense of that? I'm d.a.m.ned if I can. A South Vietnamese officer I respect told me the other day that Buddhists are very susceptible to Communist influence - but h.e.l.l, almost everybody in South Vietnam except the Diem family seems to be Buddhist, so what in G.o.d's name are we doing here? (That's the last dumb question this time round, I promise.) There's some had feeling among our guys out here that Americans are dying now for a government more concerned with hanging on to power than beating the Viet Cong. We're sacrificing ma.s.sive amounts of dollars and American byes but he Viets show no sign of grat.i.tude quite the reverse. Our ARVN opposite numbers most of the time are downright arrogant with us. A lot of them give the impression they don't want us here at all. I don't understand why we don't get off our b.u.t.ts and get tougher with them. I tried to tackle Uncle Guy on this subject when I met him for a drink at the Continental yesterday hut he was very vague. He more or less implied that it was all too complicated to explain to a mere army lieutenant. He hardly stayed five minutes then rushed off on sonic mysterious political errand which he implied was highly secret and very important. The air here, as you've no doubt read, is thick right now with rumors of coups and countercoups.

But, despite all the confusion and the dissatisfaction, it's surprising how some U.S. officers here are developing a really strong sense of commitment, of mission, almost. The jungles, the endless rice fields and the inscrutable natives seem to cast a strange kind of spell on some of us. Volunteering for a second tour isn't uncommon at all anymore and I'm not sure the paddies aren't beginning to get to me a little, as the saying goes. Perhaps not being able to fathom it all out is part of the peculiar fascination of Vietnam. But more than anything else any American who comes to this stricken little country these days is invariably horrified by the tragedy he can run into every day - it seems never-ending. Every officer I've talked to has his own version, some experience or other of terrible suffering, almost always accepted pa.s.sively. With me it was something that happened at Moc Linh, the ambush you probably read about in the papers. My ARVN opposite number seemed a really nice guy for a change - just before the VC hit us he was saying how much he hated the Communists because they'd tortured and killed his father during the French war, A few minutes later both his legs were blown off by a mine and later I found they'd put a bullet neatly through his left temple just for good measure. Maybe it was because he was my age and rank but somehow it's personalized the war for me, made me a little more determined to make the Communists pay in some way the next time we catch up with them.

I guess I'm sorry to end this letter on such a downbeat note but I don't want to leave you with the impression that this war isn't a pretty grim business. I guess that's another thing that made me want to write - thinking that if I left it any longer I might not be able to. So let me say, Dad, I appreciated your letter and I'll try to respond, G.o.d willing, if you want to write again. Now a chilled beer or two in a shady sidewalk cafe calls so I'll wrap it up there.

Yours ever, Gary Joseph let the hand holding the letter fall into his lap, anti he stared unseeing into the darkness beyond the circle of light. The muscles of his face tightened for a moment as though he were enduring physical pain; then his expression relaxed again and he leaned back on the divan with his eyes closed. The sound of the front door opening and closing reached him, followed by soft footsteps in the hail, but he didn't turn or rise. A moment later the shadowy figure of a young Asian girl with long, straight black hair reaching almost to her waist appeared in the doorway. Because of the hot night she wore brief shorts, a sleeveless T-s.h.i.+rt and thong sandals on her bare feet.

"Are you all right, Joseph?"

The anxiety in her tone made him open his eyes, and as she hurried across the room towards him, her bare thighs shone like polished amber in the dull glow of the lamp. She stopped beside the divan and laid a tentative hand upon his shoulder, a frown of concern crinkling her smooth forehead. "You were so still, honey, and the house so quiet Her voice trailed off and she glanced down at the letter he still held in his hand. "Has the mailman brought bad news?"

He shook his head, laying the letter aside, and stood up. "No, Emerald, I'm okay - it's just a letter from my son Gary in Vietnam."

Beside him she seemed tiny, the top of her dark head reaching only halfway up his chest. "Then I haven't come here in vain," she said, c.o.c.king her head on one side and smiling up at him as she held out a sheaf of ma.n.u.script paper she had been holding behind her hack. "This is chapter eleven of what I hope Professor Sherman will decide eventually is a brilliant doctoral dissertation on the Taiping Rebellion - presented for critical comment." Her West Coast accent bore not the slightest trace of her Chinese ancestry, but her manner, like her voice, was soft and delicate, obviously Asiatic, and Joseph forced a smile to his lips as he took the papers from her.

"You should smile more often, Joseph," she said, pressing her face gently against his s.h.i.+rt front and slipping her bare arms around his waist. "You look so stern and forbidding- as though you'd never once been happy in your whole life."