Saigon: A Novel Part 38

Joseph's personal telephone began ringing while he was still unlocking the door to his office at eight-thirty AM. the next morning, and when he lifted the receiver the note of urgency in his brother Guy's voice was immediately evident.

"Can you get over to the emba.s.sy right away, Joseph, please? Something special's come up."

"What's it about?

"I can't say over the telephone. I've been calling you at your villa all night. I gave up finally at four AM. when your bep told me you still weren't in. You didn't leave a contact number."

Joseph's eyes narrowed as he registered the note of reproof in his brother's voice. "Something unexpected turned up, Guy. Do you mind giving me some idea why I should run over there right away?"

"I'd rather tell you when you get here," replied Guy with slow deliberation. "But let me a.s.sure you it's in your own interest to get here fast."

"Okay, I'll be there right away."

As he hurried towards the new fortified emba.s.sy that had been built on the site of the old French Bureaux de l'Infanterie north of the cathedral square, Joseph puzzled over his brother's urgent summons. Guy had come back to Saigon for the second time nearly a year before as a counterintelligence case officer, and normally the staff of the Joint United States Public Affairs Office had little or no direct contact with the CIA Saigon station that now occupied the top three floors of the ultramodern Chancery block. At a personal level, the antipathy which Joseph had felt from the start for the brother who was sixteen years younger than himself had not lessened with the pa.s.sage of time, and by habit and mutual consent, relations between them had always remained cool and distant. Joseph therefore concluded that the reasons for Guy's call must be professional, and searching his memory he recalled hearing some behind-the-hand talk at a c.o.c.ktail party that intelligence reports suggested a new Viet Cong offensive was being planned to coincide with the annual Tet holiday, due to begin in two days time. The expert reaction, he already knew, had been that if plans of a major offensive had leaked out so easily, they must be part of a new propaganda ploy, and not much credence was being given to the threat. Perhaps, thought Joseph, some new evidence had come in and Guy wanted to brief him personally, but he gave up speculating as he came in view of the emba.s.sy, struck suddenly by its ugliness. It had taken two years to build and only four months before, in September 1967, had it finally replaced the former French bank premises overlooking the Saigon River which until then had served as the United States diplomatic headquarters in the city. Like President Thieu's Doc Lap Palace, the entire facade of the Chancery was protected by a rocket and artillery s.h.i.+eld, a concrete carapace that gave the building a sinister, fortress like aspect. A ten-foot wall also surrounded the compound, and a raised helicopter pad had been built on its flat roof; inside, a Marine force of sixty men patrolled the grounds day and night, and as one of the Marine corporals on gate duty checked his pa.s.s at the main entrance on Thong Nhut Boulevard, Joseph reflected ruefully that the rocket screens on the emba.s.sy and the palace had turned them into grim monuments to the indefatigable Viet Cong; these essential defenses were an ever-visible public acknowledgment that the guerrilla forces would always be strong enough to strike unimpeded at the twin headquarters of their enemies in the heart of their own capital.

In his room on the fifth floor of the Chancery, Guy wasted no time on preliminaries. As soon as Joseph stepped through the door, he waved him to a chair and pressed a b.u.t.ton on the tape recorder on his desk. Because the quality of the voice reproduction was poor, Joseph couldn't make out the opening words, but he sat bolt upright in his seat the moment his ears attuned to what was obviously a recording of a short-wave broadcast.

My grandfather is Senator Nathaniel Sherman, who has served as Democratic senator from Virginia for more than forty years, and I wish it to be known that, contrary to his views, I see the cruel war of aggression being waged against the heroic Vietnamese people by the United States as a crime against all humanity Joseph's knuckles whitened on the arms of his chair and he stared at the tape recorder with an anguished expression. "Thank G.o.d! At least he's alive."

Guy nodded grimly but lifted a finger indicating they should hear the recording through.

I was shot down while carrying out inhuman air raids against churches, hospitals and schools in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and I regard my role in the war as evil and shameful Joseph listened to the rest of Mark's confession in a shocked silence, and the moment Guy switched off the recording machine, he buried his head in his hands. When at last he looked up again his face was pale, and he spoke through gritted teeth. "He's alive, Guy - but what in h.e.l.l's name have they done to him to make him say that?"

"They've tortured him just like they've tortured all the other poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who've fallen into their hands," said Guy in a voice that shook with emotion. "Mark's so d.a.m.ned gutsy they've probably had to work harder on him than most - that's maybe why it's taken them all this time to squeeze that obscene bulls.h.i.+t out of him."

"Where did that come from?" Joseph nodded towards the tape machine.

"Havana Radio put it out last night."

Joseph cursed softly and closed his eyes again.

"Even if Mark wasn't my nephew, that would turn my G.o.dd.a.m.ned stomach," said Guy fiercely. "But knowing what a brave, decent guy he is makes it ten times worse." He rose from his seat, paced angrily across the office and stood staring out through the window. "It must simplify things a little in your mind too, Joseph, doesn't it? Doesn't it make you care less about those deep historical complexities you've always warned me about? Doesn't it make you wonder whether all the trouble really stems from the 'monstrous exploitation' these people suffered under the French?" Guy labored his quotation in an exasperated tone. "Couldn't it just be that these people have got a s.a.d.i.s.tic streak a mile wide that makes them want to kill and maim other human beings for the sheer h.e.l.l of it?"

Joseph sighed wearily and stood up. "Perhaps we could debate that old theme some other time, Guy," he said quietly. "Meantime I'd like to borrow that tape if I may and listen to it again on my own."

"Sit down please, Joseph. You're right maybe this isn't the moment for airing our differences." The younger man's tone was conciliatory suddenly and he returned to his desk and sat down again. "I didn't ask you to come over just to listen to the tape- there's more to it than that."

"What do you mean?" Joseph resumed his seat, lines of anxiety furrowing his brow.

"All that follows is cla.s.sified, okay - for your ears only."

Joseph nodded his agreement.

"In the last few months, the Viet Cong have begun putting out subtle feelers about talks on prisoner exchanges and what they tantalizingly call 'other political issues'

Joseph's eyes widened in surprise. "Do you mean the Viet Cong want peace talks? That's way out of character, isn't it?"

"It's downright unprecedented. It may be a cover for something else - we can't rule that out. But anyway, over the last two or three years we've been steadily picking up some important prisoners here in the South - leading cadres in the Liberation Front. Their cover is so deep even our friendly Vietnamese interrogators here in Saigon can't get the real names out of some of them. They all usually have at least six aliases. You know as well as anyone the military and political leaders.h.i.+p down here has been sent in from Hanoi - but proving it is something else."

"But now you've had some approaches about those prisoners, is that what you're saying?"

Guy nodded. "Right. The first contact through third parties three months ago threw up a list of half-a-dozen prisoners the Front wanted released right off. They suggested American pilots in Hanoi might be freed in exchange. We've heard nothing at all for several weeks but there was a new contact last night -just a few hours after Mark's confession went out on Havana Radio,"

"Do you think that was deliberate?" asked Joseph quickly.

"Almost certainly. They seem to see Mark as a trump card because he's the grandson of the famous Senator Sherman. The Front last night offered a list of a dozen Americans, naming names for the first time - and Mark's name was among them."

"But that's marvelous news, Guy!"

Well, let's try and keep this in perspective -- it's early days yet. And the plot gets thicker,"

"What do you mean?"

"In the list of the Saigon prisoners the Front want released in exchange, there's one new demand - for a very special prisoner indeed. He was captured iii the delta a year ago and he's been held in solitary confinement ever since in a whitewashed, refrigerated cell in the old Surete cellars at the top of Catinat. He's so G.o.d-d.a.m.ned tough he hasn't even revealed his name yet. He's known only as 'the man in the white room' - that's the way the Front listed him. We're sure he's on the Central Committee of the Lao Dong at Least - maybe even a member of the Politburo. We're beginning to think he might be the object of the whole exercise and they've probably waited until now to ask for him in an effort to play clown his importance. He hasn't said a single word in twelve months, but we're as sure as h.e.l.l he's the highest- ranking North Vietnamese we've ever had in our hands."

"So why are you telling me all this?"

"Because it struck inc suddenly last night after Mark's name came up - you may know something no other American in Saigon knows."

"What's that?"

"You ran around the Tongking jungles for several weeks with half the present Hanoi Politburo in your cloak-and dagger days with the OSS, right?"

Joseph nodded guardedly.

"I thought maybe you might just know 'the man in the white room' by sight. He might just be an old buddy of yours. If we could pin him down, it would help us evaluate the swap deal." Guy rose abruptly from behind his desk. "I thought we might go arid take a look at him."

7.

Joseph s.h.i.+vered as the white door of the special cell in the old Surete cellar clanged shut behind them, and he had to screw up his eyes against the glare of the bright overhead lights that reflected off the floor, the walls and the ceiling which were all painted a dazzling uniform white. Through rows of grilles set high in the walls the faint hum of invisible high-intensity air-conditioning units was audible, and the sharp chill inside the cell testified to their efficiency. At least twenty-five feet square, the room was furnished with a chair, a table and a plank bed, all painted a gleaming white, and there was a simple, unadorned hole for a toilet in one corner. Its lone occupant was seated on the chair with his back to them - a shrunken, aging figure dressed only in a ragged pair of white shorts. He was bent almost double with his shoulders hunched around his ears, and he had clasped his arms about his own waist in an attempt to provide his shuddering body with a vestige of warmth.

"We built this cell especially for him," said Guy in a normal voice, "A Special Forces patrol stumbled on his headquarters by accident in an old Dien Bien Phu kitchen near Moc Linh. He had an entourage of six personal guards and two cooks so we knew we'd netted a big fish." As they walked towards the prisoner, the CIA man pointed to the row of vents set high in the walls. "Not all those grilles are air ducts. We installed high-fidelity microphones and television cameras-to record every move and every sound he makes twenty-four hours a day, whether he's awake or asleep. So far he's given away nothing - but then until now he's never come face to face with an OSS officer who helped train that romantic little Viet Minh guerrilla band in 1945."

Guy raised his voice so that it carried clear across the cell, but the scrawny Vietnamese did not move or turn as they approached; even when the two Americans walked around in front of him, he continued to lean forward in a crouch, hugging his wasted body with his bony arms and only the top of his bowed head remained visible to them.

"I've brought an old friend of Uncle Ho's to see you, comrade," said Guy quietly in French. "Let him get a good look at you."

For a long time the prisoner kept his head bowed, but when he raised his eyes at last to look at them, Joseph tensed suddenly. Although his cheeks were hollow and sunken, and his gray hair was cropped close to his head, the high scholar's brow and the brightness of his gaze made the Vietnamese instantly recognizable, and Joseph's memory sped back nearly twenty-five years to those few days he'd spent on the ledge outside the Pac Bo cave while he was being nursed back to health after the crash of his Warhawk. Dao Van Lat's eyes widened for a fleeting instant too in a moment of mutual recognition, then his expression became blank once more.

Guy was watching both men intently and he spotted the involuntary signals. "You recognize him, Joseph, I can tell!" He spoke sharply, unable to keep a note of triumph from his voice. "Who is he?"

Joseph continued staring at Lat, his mind awhirl with contradictory impulses. How could he reconcile his memory of the idealistic young Annamese who had read Ho's poems to him on a Tongking mountainside and the ravaged guerrilla leader who had obviously been helping direct Viet Cong operations in the South? And if he identified him as one of Ho's close aides, would that encourage the U.S. government to exchange him for a group of captured pilots that might include Mark? Or would knowledge of who he really was make them more anxious to hold him? For several seconds Joseph agonized over which course would be most likely to bring about Mark's release - then unable to decide, he turned his back suddenly on Lat.

"I don't know for sure," he said slowly. "I think maybe I do recognize his face-but I'm not certain."

A shadow of relief pa.s.sed across Lat's features and he bent his head once more to stare at the floor.

"But he was one of the group with Ho in Tongking, wasn't he?" Guy's voice was angrily insistent, and Joseph turned back, frowning, to face him.

"I've spent a lot of time in Vietnam over the years, Guy, and met a lot of people. I think I recall his face from somewhere but it may have been twenty or thirty years ago. And he hadn't been through the h.e.l.l of a year in solitary then. I don't really remember where it might have been."

"We've got pictures going back forty years at the emba.s.sy," said Guy quickly. "We inherited the old Surete photo-archives. Maybe you can identify one with a name on it." The CIA man glanced down at Lat, who sat staring vacantly in front of him, behaving as though they had already departed. "But there's something else, Joseph, that might help jog your memory - it's entered on his file under 'scars and distinguis.h.i.+ng physical characteristics.'

Taking hold of one of Lat's manacled arms, Guy lifted him to his feet and with a quick movement of his free hand, pushed his loose shorts down his legs to the floor. He retained his grip on the arm of the Vietnamese so that he could not bend to retrieve the garment and turned him towards Joseph in a way that exposed his groin. "You see now what I mean he's got no G.o.dd.a.m.ned b.a.l.l.s!"

Lat, helpless in the American's grip, tried without success to straighten his pathetically thin body but managed to keep his head up and stared at the far wall, striving to achieve a posture that would have some dignity, at least in his own mind.

"How do you account for that, Joseph? Could he have been some kind of court eunuch in Hue in the old days? Was that where you might have met?"

Lat was struggling to keep his balance, and Joseph turned away and walked towards the door so that he didn't have to look at the shrunken, mutilated body of the sixty-five year-old Vietnamese. "It's no help, Guy- let him get dressed. We'll go arid look at the pictures." He knocked loudly on the door to indicate to the guard outside that they wished to leave and didn't turn round again, but out of the corner of his eye as he waited he could still see Lat, crouched s.h.i.+vering on the white stool, struggling with his manacled hands to pull the tattered shorts up around his waist again.

8.

Because the CIA photo archive of terrorist suspects stored on the top floor of the Chancery was cla.s.sified "secret," Guy had to escort Joseph past several security checks and remain with him while the search was made. Outside, the rhythmic clatter of a helicopter landing or taking off from the top of the building became audible from time to time, and the steady hum of rooftop shredders destroying cla.s.sified waste provided a monotonous drone of background noise as Joseph began the laborious task of scrutinizing the hundreds of old photographs bled in pull-out drawers. Guy watched over his shoulder, turning away occasionally to gaze impatiently out of the plastic windows at the restricted view of the street visible through gaps in the rocket screens, but Joseph found it difficult to concentrate. He worked mechanically, peering at the succession of anonymous Vietnamese faces pictured beneath 1930s protest banners without really seeing them; in his mind's eye he could see only the haggard face of I)ao Van Lat, trapped in that bare, s.h.i.+mmering dungeon that seemed more suited to the realms of science fiction than a police headquarters, and after several minutes he stopped and turned round to look at his brother.

"Whose idea was it to build that nightmare cell, Guy?" he asked in a puzzled voice.

"That was dreamed up here by the Agency."

"But why's it painted white? And why the near-freezing temperature and the spy cameras?"

"You know the Vietnamese rush to put on sweaters whenever the thermometer falls below seventy, don't you? Like all his compatriots the prisoner imagines his veins will contract in cold temperatures - it's disorientation technique. It's been painted white for the same reason."

"A place like that's more likely to drive a man out of his mind than make him talk."

"That's a surprising sentiment," said Guy quietly, "coming from someone who's just learned his son's being tortured witless in Hanoi."

"That's no G.o.dd.a.m.ned reason for us to do it, too!"

Guy placed his hands deliberately on the table and leaned towards Joseph. "Listen, our little allies here in Saigon know as much about the gentle art of persuasion as their cousins in Hanoi and we can't stop that - this is their country, remember. We insisted on putting our friend in that special cell to get him out of their clutches - to protect him. Those Vietnamese manning the doors and the cameras are on our payroll - they're Agency employees. We insisted on that. If he'd been left to the South Vietnamese, he'd have been dead long ago."

Joseph snorted with exasperation. "Congratulations! You've discovered the world's first humane form of torture."

"If you're so concerned about our friend, just find his picture and give us his name," snapped Guy. "Then maybe he'll talk and we'll give him an overcoat and you'll feel a whole lot better about it. Don't you understand? We've got a golden Opportunity to do a major deal that will get Mark released - if you can just come up with a name for him."

Because Guy's face was so close to his, Joseph was suddenly more intensely aware than ever before of the Gallic cast to his features; the dark hair, the narrow face and the eager expression reminded him suddenly of someone he'd known well, and he started inwardly when he realized he was seeing another version of the boyish face of Paul Devraux. Guy's eyes were alight with the same kind of fervid idealism that had in the end proved fatal for the Frenchman, and in that moment Joseph made up his mind to pa.s.s over any likeness he might find of Lat in the archive. Without replying he turned back to the table and began going through the motions of inspecting the photographs once more.

For almost a quarter of an hour he sorted through drawer after drawer, consciously trying to give the impression he was examining each envelope with care, pretending to subject some to closer scrutiny and pa.s.sing over others more quickly; Guy grew more restless as the minutes ticked by and he began pacing slowly back arid forth while he waited. By chance, Joseph decided to peer closely at what seemed to be another anonymous portrait and found himself looking at a female face that made his heart leap into his throat. Although he hadn't been concentrating fully, the curve of her cheeks and the distinctive l.u.s.trous eyes that had mocked or condemned him by turns whenever they met flashed a message directly to some part of his brain that might always have been waiting unsleeping to receive it. The photograph looked like an enlargement of a shot taken at long range with a telephoto lens; hatless and obviously unaware of the camera, his daughter was pictured with her long hair dressed in a thick practical braid that hung in front of her left shoulder. Behind her there was a background of thatched huts and palm trees that suggested she was in a village of the Mekong delta. With shaking hands Joseph turned the print over and read the inscription on the back: "Tuyet Luong, Long An province, January 1963."

After staring at it transfixed for some time, he realized Guy had stopped his pacing, and glancing up, he found his brother watching him intently from the far end of the room. Their eyes met for an instant then Guy began moving back towards him, but before he reached his side, Joseph calmly replaced the photograph in its brown paper envelope and slipped it back among the others.

"Did you find someone who looked like him?" asked Guy sharply.

"No - nothing interesting." .Joseph didn't look up again and he went on inspecting the files for another five minutes before standing up and rubbing his eyes. "Do you mind, Guy, if we call a break there and finish this some other time? I'd like to take time out to listen to Mark's tape again - and maybe contact Gary too with the news."

Guy nodded reluctantly. "Okay - but let's try to get back to it real soon."

He escorted Joseph to the emba.s.sy entrance, then returned immediately to the photo-archive. He went straight to the last drawer Joseph had worked on and examined the dog-eared folders covering the pictures. While walking towards the table he had taken a careful look at the folder in which Joseph was replacing the picture that had so obviously startled him; one corner, he had noticed, was slightly torn, and he had memorized its position towards the front of the drawer while Joseph was replacing it. Pulling it out again, he extracted the photograph and stared at the face of a beautiful Vietnamese girl 'who looked as though she might have been of mixed parentage. Turning it over, he read the caption and made a note of the name and reference number on a slip of paper. in response to a phone call, an a.s.sistant came to the room, and Guy asked him to run a computer check on the name. Guy remained in the archive, glancing occasionally at the picture, and five minutes later the a.s.sistant returned.

"Several unconfirmed trace reports on Tuyet Luong have gone on file over the past three years, but none has been followed up," he said, glancing down at the printout in his hand. "Routine sightings have been reported from Qui Nhon, Da Nang - and the latest. one two months ago came from Hue. Her original sin was suspected murder of two members of the South Vietnamese security police in 1961 - and she's believed to have thrown a grenade at two of our operatives a month later. They escaped with minor injuries. The first two trace reports were routine and they weren't acted on when received because other more urgent cases currently had priority. The last one's been lying on the file because n.o.body was interested enough to follow it up. Tuyet Luong's a back number these days, you might say."

Guy nodded arid took the printout from the a.s.sistant. "Have the Hue trace checked and let me know the result as soon as it comes in."

"Okay, sir," said the a.s.sistant briskly. 'I'll get on to it right away."

9.

Joseph sat alone at his own dining table that evening, staring absently into the shadows beyond the candles his bep had lit. A bowl of canh chua soup stood before him but it was untouched and growing cold, and every minute or two the bep peered anxiously around the kitchen door to see if he was ready for his next course. A bottle of Vietnamese ruou de stood beside a slender-stemmed gla.s.s at his elbow, and from time to time he sipped the rice wine but made no attempt to touch his food.

When the bep appeared noiselessly beside him, he started in surprise, then made an apologetic gesture as he saw the Vietnamese gazing accusingly at his full soup bowl. "I'm sorry, Chinh - I'm not very hungry this evening."

"But Mister Sherman, canh chua is my best soup," complained the cook with a beseeching smile. "Is my speciality - shrimp, bean sprouts, pineapple, celery-I put all good things in for you. And your bo nuong la is ready now."

"Okay Chinh, bring in the bo nuong la. I'll try to eat a little."

The Vietnamese removed the soup and hurried back to the kitchen. Before he appeared again with the main dish the telephone rang, and Joseph heard him answer it with a sibilant flurry of broken English. When he reappeared with the food - finely chopped tender beef wrapped in grape leaves - he was smiling delightedly. "That was your brother, Mister Sherman. He asked if you here and when I tell him you alone, he say he coming right over. Shall I bring bo nuong ta for your brother too, Mister Sherman?"

Joseph's face clouded for a moment, then he nodded. "All right-if he hasn't already dined."

Guy arrived a quarter of an hour later, and the bep's smile broadened as he conducted him into the dining room; before another minute had pa.s.sed, a dish of food had been placed before him.

"I didn't mean to invite myself to dinner," said Guy apologetically. "I just wanted to talk to you."