Saigon: A Novel Part 35

"Beautiful, just beautiful," breathed Jock as he squinted at the scene through the eye of his camera. "I've never seen anything to match it."

The barrage lasted for an incredible two hours, and when it finally died away pale streaks of morning light illuminated the final rebel advance into the palace. Under lowering skies from which drizzling rain still fell, tanks, armored cars and armored personnel carriers, followed by running, crouching men, inched slowly towards the wrought-iron railings, and finally at about six-thirty AM. Naomi saw a solitary white flag of surrender flutter out of one of the palace's high windows.

The Vietnamese Marines were wearing scarlet scarves about their necks by this time to distinguish them from the defenders, and on spotting the white flag they rose up into the open, screaming their battle cries in unison, and raced across the pitted lawn towards the smoking ruins. Naomi and her crew were among the handful of journalists courageous enough to follow them, and a few stray shots were still whistling across the formal gardens as they dashed for the shattered main door; because Marines were scuffling with fleeing Special Forces troops and blocking the steps, Jock led the way through a gaping hole blown in the wall, and inside they found the marble floor littered with the gla.s.s of smashed chandeliers and fallen masonry. Groaning Special Forces troops, their bodies shattered by sh.e.l.l fragments, lay on the broad staircases alongside men already dead, plaster from the high ceilings covered the brocade chairs and potted palms, and the air was filled with choking smoke and the reek of cordite. The attack had severed the power supplies, and the jubilant rebel soldiers, not to be denied the spoils of victory, lit candles and began carrying away hooks and ornaments in an hysterical mood of celebration.

Guy had long ago explained the palace layout to her, and Naomi led the crew up the wide staircase towards the offices of the president and his Supreme Counselor, but before they reached the top a Marine colonel leaned over a bal.u.s.trade and begun yelling wildly to a brigadier and a group of senior officers waiting below. "They're not here-their rooms are empty!"

The little brigadier nodded grimly. "The communications shelter is deserted too! Come down!"

Naomi ran back down the stairs to the brigadier and took him by the arm: "Where could they be?"

"We've found three tunnels under the palace," he said, shaking his head. "They all lead into the sewers - they've escaped."

Naomi nodded her thanks and led the way up the stairs once more towards the office of President Diem on the third floor. All around them the air rang with the sound of rebel soldiers sacking the palace: one group of Marines rushed by carrying armfuls of whisky and brandy bottles from Ngo Dinh Nhu's cellar, others bludgeoned gold filigree fittings from the walls and stuffed them in their pockets, while some simply fired their weapons, shrieking with laughter, into the antique French mirrors covering the walls. When Jock and Naomi reached Diem's office, they found the drab room musty and in disarray. The president's double-breasted sharkskin jacket hung from the back of a rickety rocking chair, and a French book with a curiously prophetic t.i.tle lay on the cluttered desk. Naomi glanced around the room, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her face with distaste, and silently held the book to Jock's camera so that its t.i.tle showed; it was called ironically Ils Arrivent - They Are Coming.

In Ngo Dinh Nhu's larger office on the floor below, they found the looters had already finished their work. Sawdust was spilled everywhere from the stuffed hunting trophies that had been slashed open and torn from the walls; the sensuous portrait of Nhu's wife above his desk had been lewdly defaced with a bayonet that had been left jutting from her lower abdomen, and in her own suite some of the long rails of filmy, silken ao dai had been ripped apart and strewn around the room. Others remained hanging neatly in their closet above line after line of stiletto-heeled shoes, and Naomi guided Jock in filming these and the smashed bottled of Vent Vert perfume that lay scattered around the bathroom with its big pink sunken bath and washbasin of black Venetian marble.

As they pa.s.sed through Ngo Dinh Nhu's office again on their way back to the ground floor, Naomi had to wade through a litter of files that the looters had scattered across the carpet. On a whim she stopped and bent to look at some of them and discovered that their buff-colored covers were stamped with the t.i.tle of Nhu's notorious Social and Political Research Service. Under the glow of the camera light which Jock held for her, she flicked idly through one or two of them; they appeared to consist mainly of informers' reports on Saigon politicians and army officers, written in French or Vietnamese, but her attention was arrested abruptly when she turned the cover of one file and saw Guy Sherman's name printed on its front. She opened it and was startled to find herself looking at a piece of Continental Palace notepaper on top of the file, which bore her own handwriting. The name and address of the Buddhist priest who had alerted her to Thich Quang Duc's suicide seemed to leap off the page at her, and she knelt there on the floor staring numbly at the note for perhaps half a minute, no longer hearing the crash of breaking gla.s.s nor the shrill, crazed laughter of the troops plundering the palace all around her.

16.

Four hours later, just after eleven o'clock on that morning of November 2, there was a brisk knock on the door of Naomi's suite in the Continental, and she opened it to find Guy Sherman smiling broadly at her. He wore no jacket and his clothes looked crumpled as if he hadn't changed them got a long time, but he had a frosted bottle of Laurent Perrier tucked under his arm and two long-stemmed champagne gla.s.ses dangled from the fingers of his right hand.

"What are we celebrating?" she asked with a weary smile, standing aside to let him enter.

"Just the overthrow of the dreaded Ngo Dinh brothers," he replied, shrugging exaggeratedly. "Nothing more - the whole thing went like a dream. Maybe we'll drink a toast to your Outstanding exclusive coverage of that subject, too." Instead of entering he leaned forward, took her by the hand and led her down the corridor into the adjoining suite. "I rented this specially just to be near you today, Naomi. And n.o.body knows I'm here. So we can both hide away from the d.a.m.ned telephone for an hour or two, right?" He grinned again, knocked the door shut with his heel and walked confidently across the room to put the champagne and gla.s.ses on a low table in front of a sofa.

"Thanks to your timely tip we certainly got off to a flying start while everyone else was enjoying their siesta." Naomi smiled as she sank onto the sofa. "And thanks for your note too. It allowed us all to grab sonic much-needed sleep last night while the opposition went red-eyed. We've certainly got some marvelous footage -- enough to make an hour-long doc.u.mentary. But even so, my coverage is still just a tiny bit inconclusive at present."

She relaxed against the sofa back with a long sigh and closed her eyes. The tension of the last few hours had left her feeling drained; while her crew were trying to s.h.i.+p their film out to Hong Kong and onward to London, she had forced her way through the jubilant crowds to the central post office to telephone a voice report for the news bulletins. On the way she found that the fact that the president and his brother were still missing had not in any way dampened the frenzied celebrations that were being mounted in the streets. joy mixed with vengeful violence had been evident everywhere; the offices of the regime's English- language newspaper, the Times of Vietnam, were burning fiercely when she pa.s.sed, and gangs of students chanting "Long Live the Junta" were rampaging along many of the boulevards. She saw a mob hauling down the ma.s.sive statue of Vietnam's legendary heroines, the Trung sisters, because one of them had been fas.h.i.+oned in the likeness of Madame Nhu, and homes of pro Nhu ministers and officials were being ransacked all over the city.

She had watched the crowds leaping Onto tanks and hugging the soldiers, who were clearly startled by such warm expressions of affection from the ordinary people, and soon everywhere girls were throwing bouquets of flowers and gifts to the delighted troops. But she had found herself most deeply moved by scenes she had witnessed outside the paG.o.das; army trucks had arrived every few minutes bringing groups of haggard Buddhist prisoners newly released from jail. They were embraced deliriously by their fellows and many, because they were weak from torture and privation, had to be carried into the temples. After she'd finished her call to London she had made a special detour to inquire about the monk who had been her informant in June, but amidst the near-pandemonium at his paG.o.da, a nun had told her there was no trace of him; he had disappeared suddenly even before the raids on the paG.o.das, she said tearfully, and he was believed to have been secretly murdered by the security forces, Naomi, stunned by the news, had pa.s.sed close to the ruined Gia Long Palace as she made her way back to the hotel, and here and there she had seen the crumpled body of a soldier or a civilian still lying huddled in the gutter. The sight of these corpses and the sense of shock she had experienced on learning about the disappearance of the Buddhist monk were still preying on her mind as she watched Guy's fingers rip the gold foil from the champagne bottle, and she started involuntarily when the cork exploded from its neck. Guy smiled, never taking his eyes from hers, and filled the two gla.s.ses frothing to the brim. Then he came to sit down beside her on the sofa and handed her one, but before he drank he withdrew from his trouser pocket a circular tin of sixteen-millimeter film and laid it on the table between them. "Your coverage isn't inconclusive anymore, Naomi," he said softly. "Shall we drink to it?"

She looked questioningly at the tin lying on the table. "What's that?"

"Film of the bodies."

Because she was still half thinking of what she had seen so recently in the gutters outside the palace, she gazed back at him blankly. "Whose bodies?"

"Diem and Nhu."

She sat upright suddenly, spilling some of her champagne. "They're dead?"

He nodded. "Yes -- and this is the only film in existence of their demise."

"Who killed them?"

"A police major sent to bring them from Cholon where they were hiding. They loaded both of them into the back of an M-ii3 armored personnel carrier with the major and closed the hatch. Diem was shot In the head and Nhu was bayoneted to death en route. They were both dead by the time they got back to the headquarters of the Joint General Staff."

She stared at the little film, her eyes suddenly bright with interest.

"And you, Naomi," he said, raising his gla.s.s in her direction with an ironic little smile, "have some exclusive footage of the view into the APC when they opened the hatch."

"Who filmed it?" she said when she found her voice.

"None other than yours truly." His smile broadened. "Although of course only you and I will ever know that."

"May I look?"

He nodded, and she put down her champagne untouched to open the tin. Holding it carefully by its edges, she pulled the strip of film off the reel and lifted it eagerly towards the light of the window.

"It isn't very distinct - I'm not the world's greatest cameraman and I had no special lights. But it's usable." He leaned towards her and squinted through the back of the film, pointing with his finger. "The bodies are lying face forward on the seats. Most of what you can see is their backs and the backs of their heads. The bigger, roly-poly body on the right is Diem of course, and the smaller one with several bayonet wounds is brother Nhu. I've screened it once for myself in our little photo lab - you can see it's them okay."

"It's incredible film, Guy," breathed the English journalist. "How were they caught?"

Guy's pleasure in her reaction showed plainly in his face, and letting his hand fall casually onto her knee, he began to stroke her trouser-clad thigh slowly as he talked. "They were betrayed early today by one of their palace aides. They slipped away last night about nine o'clock using one their secret underground tunnels. They'd got a Red Cross Land Rover waiting for them at the tunnel exit and it whisked them off to Cholon, where they'd already set up a direct communications link with the palace in the home of a friendly Chinese merchant. They kept up their contacts through the night with their supporters in the palace and even intermittently with the coup headquarters. General Minh offered them safe conduct several times if they surrendered - but they turned him down. So Minh had to plan a careful general a.s.sault. n.o.body except a couple of their closest aides knew Diem and Nhu had gone until Gia Long was finally stormed. It was Diem himself who gave the order to show the white flag in the end - but by telephone from Cholon."

"Did they give themselves up after that?"

"Diem called Minh about six-thirty A.M. and offered to surrender in return for a guarantee of safe conduct to the airport and a flight abroad. Minh agreed, but Diem, devious to the end, didn't reveal where they were - or perhaps in this treacherous little country he knew what to expect anyway. After the aide betrayed their hideout, they fled to the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Cholon to take communion. They were still on their knees when the arrest party found them there. They bundled them both into the M-113, and shots were heard inside as soon as they moved off."

Naomi's face registered her distaste, "But why were they murdered so callously?"

Guy shrugged. "I guess it was inevitable from the start. The junta would never have felt -safe with the Ngo Dinhs alive and kicking - wherever they were."

"So they were killed on General Minh's orders?"

Guy nodded wordlessly, still stroking her thigh, but without warning Naomi stood up and walked over to the window. She folded her arms and stood looking down at the excited crowds thronging Lam Son Square, a frown creasing her brow. "How is it you're so well informed?" she asked quietly without turning around. "Were you on the inside of the coup? I tried to call you several times yesterday, but they always said you were unavailable."

Guy sipped his champagne and smiled. "Let's just say I was keeping a close watching brief at the COUP headquarters. By the time the bodies came back in the M-I 53, n.o.body protested when I stepped up and produced my little home movie camera - is that what you mean?"

Instead of replying she pulled a folded slip of paper from a pocket in her blouse and walked back to the sofa where he sat. "I think you must have dropped this sometime, Guy," she said tonelessly, holding towards him the note about the Buddhist monk she had given him five months before.

He glanced at the paper then back into her face, still smiling easily. "Where did you find it?"

"On the floor of Ngo Dinh Nhu's office at six-thirty this morning. Isn't that where you dropped it?"

He continued to smile at her unabashed. "Sometimes in my job, Naomi, you have to play along with both sides to make sure you know what everyone's thinking. Quite often you have to deal with people you don't particularly like." He took the slip of paper from her and looked at it for a second before letting it drop onto the table. "Intelligence work is like any other business - for a deal to work well, both sides have to be seen to get something out of it."

Naomi's voice trembled slightly. "But giving that monk's name to Nhu probably led to his murder."

"Lot's of people die when there's a war on. Naomi. If you really believe in what you're doing, you can't worry about every little sacrifice that has-to be made along the way."

"But doesn't the monk's death bother you at all?"

Guy drained his gla.s.s and refilled it, nodding towards the paper on the table. "Naomi, you benefited from what I did. That little quid pro quo kept my lines of communication open to Nhu and his dragon lady. They kept right on talking to me- and you willingly used what I gave you in your dispatches. You wanted good reliable information as badly as I did, didn't you?"

Naomi stared down at him wide-eyed; then reluctantly she nodded.

"So let's stop worrying our heads about all that stuff, shall we?" He took her hand, and she let him pull her down onto the sofa beside him. Gazing at her with a new intensity, he raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers, nodding at the same time towards the little tin of film on the table. "In there, Naomi, you've got another world exclusive - I've delivered the goods. So it's time now for grown-up girls to stop hiding behind hints and promises, isn't it?"

She looked at him undecidedly for a moment, then nodded once more in agreement.

"I'm really glad things have worked out for us at last, Naomi. I'm not accustomed to waiting this long, you know, It's only because you're so d.a.m.ned special He began unfastening her blouse as he talked, and when he leaned close and began to kiss her bare shoulders she closed her eyes. She let him unb.u.t.ton her trousers and remove them, but her expression remained strangely blank as she watched him take off his own clothes. Even when he was naked and leaned down to kiss her again on the lips, she still didn't respond, and he pulled back from her with a puzzled smile.

"I didn't figure you for an English ice maiden, Naomi," he said slowly. "You're not really one of those girls who can't get started until they're taken roughly, are you?" His smile broadened when she didn't reply, and he dropped his gaze pointedly to the filmy lace of her bra.s.siere. The dark whorls of her nipples were clearly visible through the flimsy garment, and with both hands he seized it suddenly and ripped it in two at its narrowest part, fully exposing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"G.o.d, Naomi, you're beautiful," he said in a faltering voice as he caressed her. "I've never wanted any woman as much."

She felt her nipples tauten beneath his fingers and her own breathing quickened involuntarily as he forced her silken underpants down over her hips with quick, clumsy movements; but even when he rose above her, fully aroused himself, she still stared back at him with the same frozen expression on his face.

"It's going to feel like I'm raping you, Naomi, if you lie there much longer like that with your knees pressed together," he gasped. "Relax! The teasing game's over."

He tried to slip one hand between her knees to prise them apart, ma.s.saging the pale gold haze of hair at the base of her belly feverishly with his other hand - but she squirmed away from him suddenly.

"Please stop, Guy," she said sharply. "I don't want this to go any further." She sat up and turned away from him, covering her face with her hands, and he stared at her nonplussed.

"What in h.e.l.l's name is going on?" His voice was thick, and his chest rose and fell rapidly with his erratic breathing. "I don't get any of this!"

She took her hands from her face and stared across the room, dry-eyed. "I'm sorry, Guy. You may be able to shrug off the death of that young Buddhist quite easily, but I can't. It's made me realize suddenly what I'm doing."

"What are you doing?" he asked in an astounded voice.

"Trading other people's lives for my own selfish ends!"

"Look, maybe you'll feel better later - have some more champagne." He touched her bare shoulder and made to get up and refill her gla.s.s, but she shook her head.

"No, Guy - I don't want any more. I'm going." She rose and pulled on her trousers.

"Naomi, what's gotten into you?" He stood up quickly and tried to take her by the shoulders, but she pulled away from him. He glanced down at the table, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the tin of film and held it towards her. "Don't you even want this?"

"Five minutes ago I wanted it very badly," she said in an urgent undertone. "But now I'm not going to take it from you."

"Why in heaven's name not?" He moved towards her and forced it into her hands. "I want you to have the d.a.m.ned film. I went to a h.e.l.l of a lot of trouble to get it for you."

Avoiding his eyes she took the film and hurled it savagely towards a wastepaper basket. It struck the side of the metal container and sprang open, and the film uncoiled in snakelike loops across the carpet. Without Stopping to finish dressing she walked quickly towards the door, carrying her blouse, and with one hand on the doork.n.o.b she stopped and spoke over her shoulder.

"Guy, I don't want you to think I'm pa.s.sing judgment on you because I'm not - that's for you to do yourself. It's my own actions that I'm suddenly disgusted with."

Without turning around again she opened the door and stepped out into the corridor; Guy called her name more urgently, but she ignored him and walked quickly away towards her own room, the shreds of her torn bra.s.siere still hanging loose about her naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

PART SEVEN.

We Have Fought a Thousand Years!.

1968-1969.

President Kennedy's decision to encourage and support the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem proved to be a fateful turning point in the United States' involvement in Vietnam. The American president was himself a.s.sa.s.sinated three weeks after the anti-Diem coup, but General Duong Van Minh's administration in which he had invested so much hope lasted only three months before it was overthrown in its turn by another military junta. A bewildering succession of ineffectual "revolving door" governments emerged from the flurry of coups and countercoups that followed, and relations between them and the ma.s.s of the people in South Vietnam remained as poor as they had been under Diem. The Buddhists, elated and strengthened by the success of their campaign to bring Diem down, expanded into a formidable antigovernment, anti-American force in the cities, and public strife became a familiar, everyday occurrence. Buddhists and Catholics died in street fighting, student unrest compounded the troubles, and because the new governments in Saigon wished above all else to avoid the crude, police-state methods of Ngo Dinh Nhu, these disturbances were dealt with only tentatively. Against this background of growing chaos, the Strategic Hamlet program collapsed in the countryside, and the Viet Cong went from strength to strength. Ho Chi Minh and the rest of the Communist leaders.h.i.+p in Hanoi were not slow to exploit this deteriorating situation, and they began for the first time to infiltrate large tactical units of the North Vietnamese Army into South Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia. Under these circ.u.mstances a hoped-for withdrawal became impossible for the United States, but although President Lyndon Johnson increased the number of military advisers in Vietnam to thirty thousand, by early 1965 the Communists were standing clearly on the brink of total victory, and it was then that he decided to change radically the nature of America's commitment. He first ordered U.S. warplanes to begin regular bombing raids against targets in both North and South Vietnam in February, and in July of that same year he sent the first batch of fifty thousand ground combat troops into Vietnam to fight independently of the South Vietnamese. With aircraft carriers and destroyers of the Seventh Fleet already cruising off the coast of the war zone, the might of the United States Army, Navy and Air Force was from that time firmly committed to the war, although the commitment was termed "limited" and it had been made by political stealth, without any formal declaration of war. Such a commitment had been made possible by mystery-shrouded events that had occurred off North Vietnam's coast in the Gulf of Tongking in August 1964; according to an announcement made by the president himself, North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked two U.S. destroyers without provocation, and in response to "Communist aggression" he had ordered air strikes against the patrol boat bases and oil storage depots in North Vietnam. This dramatic revelation was made to reporters at midnight on August 4, and in an emotional atmosphere three days later, the U.S. Congress pa.s.sed almost unanimously a resolution drafted in the White House giving blanket approval to any measures the president might take to prevent "further aggression." Known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the legislation also stated that the United States regarded Vietnam as vital to both its national interest and world peace, and it allowed President Johnson a few months later to start the bombing and begin dispatching a force of ultimately half a million men to Vietnam without further reference to Congress or the people. Later it became clear that the US. Navy s.h.i.+ps had not been innocent victims of aggression at all, but the controversial Tongking Resolution nevertheless remained in force for six years, until antiwar sentiment eventually forced its repeal. The million or more GIs sent to fight in Vietnam under its provisions, however, found themselves no more able to find and defeat their elusive enemy than the French or the ARVN forces had before them. Even though they were aided by North Vietnamese regular battalions, the Viet Cong still rarely fought anything but guerrilla-style actions and a third of all American combat casualties throughout the war were victims of b.o.o.by traps and mines. As the number of troops committed by President Johnson rose, the U.S. aid bill to Vietnam also grew for what was variously termed "rural development," "pacification" or "the other war" - but these efforts to woo South Vietnam's peasants away from allegiance to the Viet Cong did not meet with much success. .h.i.ther. In fact, far from improving living conditions, the policies of the Johnson administration had a disastrous impact on the life of many people in the South; by early 1968 the combined effects of the American search-and-destroy operations, the chemical defoliation of the jungles and the bombing in the South had produced millions of new homeless refugees who flocked to the already overcrowded cities to live in shanty zones. There they faced a new struggle for survival because the presence of so many Americans and their generous aid programs produced a ma.s.sive economic inflation. Meanwhile the political leaders.h.i.+p of South Vietnam became more stable, first under the premiers.h.i.+p of Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky and then under General Nguyen Van Thieu's presidency, but these administrations remained as fundamentally unpopular and corrupt as that of President Diem, arid they never won the support and trust of the people at large. As the war continued inconclusively through the mid-sixties, the United States resorted increasingly to air attacks against the North in an effort to convince the Communist leaders in Hanoi that there was a firm resolve to defeat them; but in practice, the privations of the bombing served to unite the people of North Vietnam and make them more determined than ever to resist the "foreign enemy" that had haunted them throughout their history. During these years a growing number of American air force and navy pilots shot down over the North were made Prisoners of war in Hanoi, and as their number grew, rumors began to filter out that they were being subjected to brutal, medieval tortures in the course of "brainwas.h.i.+ng," and as a result, this small group of Americans became a focus of intense emotional interest in the United States.

1.

The heart of Hanoi was blacked out, and the broad, deep waters of the Lake of the Restored Sword reflected only a dull glimmer of light from the thinly clouded night sky as a rattling, twenty- year-old government Tatra nosed cautiously along its northern bank in the last week of January 1968. As usual the streets were clogged with mule carts, hand barrows and bicycles piled high with farm produce, and the Tongking peasants hurrying to resupply the capital under the cover of darkness refused doggedly to yield to the honking motor car. Already they could hear the distant drone of American B-52s and F-105s, and this familiar sound that they had heard almost every night for the past week was causing them to quicken their pace and lean their shoulders against their loads with a greater urgency.

Because the weather was still oppressively hot, the windows of the ancient Czechoslovakian-built vehicle were wound right down in their rusty runnels and the noise of the aircraft engines was clearly audible to Lieutenant Mark Sherman, who sat hunched between two armed Vietnamese guards on the rear seat. But if lie heard them, he gave no sign to his captors; his wrists were manacled, traveling irons had been locked around his ankles, and he stared out listlessly at the dim outline of the lake's paG.o.das and the swarm of pa.s.sing peasants without registering them. He still wore the olive drabs which he had donned with his flying gear the night he took off from Da Nang for the last time early in 1966; these flying overalls had long since grown threadbare, and his appearance now bore little resemblance to that of the spruce, young air force pilot who had climbed so eagerly into his F105D Thunderchief two years before. His skull had been shaved and the pallid skin of his gaunt face was stretched taut across his hones, leaving his eyes darkly ringed in their hollow sockets; his shoulders sagged, his gaze was lifeless, without light, and his shackled hands dangled limp in an att.i.tude of hopelessness between his splayed thighs. Occasionally the gastric stench of the Tatra's poorly refined Soviet benzene caused his features to twitch into a grimace of distaste, but his face otherwise remained devoid of expression.

From time o time, Tran Van Kim half turned in the front pa.s.senger seat to look at him, but the American showed no curiosity. In his early fifties, the round face of the Vietnamese above his high-necked cadre's tunic was still curiously youthful, effeminate almost, and if Mark Sherman could have seen the high-ranking aide to Ho Chi Minh with his father's eyes, he would have detected instantly in the regular cast of his features a hint of that quality that had produced a face of such great beauty in his sister, Lao. But Mark remained oblivious to his presence and continued to peer listlessly out into the night as he had done throughout the entire, hour-long journey from the Son Tay prisoner-of-war camp northwest of Hanoi.

'Have you no wish to know where you are being taken, Lieutenant Sherman?' asked Kim speaking English in a sibilant undertone. But although both his guards jabbed him sharply with the muzzles of their machine pistols, the question still drew no response from the American, and after warning the guards with a little hand gesture not to repeat their actions, Kim turned away and relaxed in his seat again.

The Tatra, with its bizarre tailfin jutting through the camouflage covering of palm leaves and jungle vegetation, chugged on around the lake and skirted the old craft quarter of the city before heading towards one of the outlying suburbs on its southern borders. Once, the density of the crowds thronging the streets brought it to a standstill, and the army driver stuck his head out of the window to listen to the sound of the aircraft for a moment.

"Haiphong - the harbor again would you say, Comrade Kim?" he asked over his shoulder.

Instead of replying Kim listened intently to the drone of the aircraft above the clouds; the roar of their approach was growing louder as twin missions converged from U.S. bases in northern Thailand and Seventh Fleet carriers in the South China Sea, and it became clear from the sudden added noise that some antiaircraft and missile batteries ringing the city were beginning to open up. 'It sounds to me as if they might he coming our way tonight," said Kim quietly, signaling for the driver to press forward again. "The sooner we get to our destination, the better."

The driver restarted the engine and moved off, peering intently through the winds.h.i.+eld as he eased the car through the shadowy crowds by the inadequate light filtering through the blackout grilles on the headlamps. On display boards at the roadsides every few yards, giant head-and-shoulder portraits of Ho Chi Minh gazed down between posters showing Vietnamese peasant girls destroying American warplanes with a single rifle shot, and seeing these, Kim turned towards the back seat again.

"Since you show no curiosity, Lieutenant Sherman, about the purpose of your visit to our capital, I shall tell you why you've been brought here - you are to be accorded the honor of being received by the beloved leader of the Vietnamese people. The president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, whose portrait you see all about you here, wishes to talk with you in person."

Kim watched his prisoner closely, but no flicker of interest disturbed the blankness of Mark's expression, and in the silence that ensued, the distant crump of falling bombs became audible.

"Perhaps you don't believe me, lieutenant. Perhaps you find it impossible to believe that such an important national leader would remain in the heart of the city at a time when there's great danger from your imperialist bombers." Another brittle smile flashed across his face. "But you Americans don't understand the true nature of his greatness. He insists on sharing all the dangers that his people and his comrades face.

A brilliant orange glare lit the interior of the car suddenly as a bomb exploded with a great burst of light on an oil storage depot a mile or two ahead of them, and the driver stopped the car instantly in the middle of the street and dived out of the door. Kim watched the flames for a moment then rapped out instructions to the guards on the rear seat before flinging himself out of the door on his side. All around the car the peasants were abandoning their produce carts and das.h.i.+ng towards the sidewalks to clamber into rows of barrel-sized, one-man bomb shelters that had been excavated from the Street and lined with concrete; once inside they pulled lids, like manhole covers, into place above their heads, and within a minute the area appeared deserted.