Saigon: A Novel Part 45

Once Naomi had left for Vietnam to cover the spectacular southward advance of Hanoi's eighteen divisions, Joseph retreated sixty miles south of London to their country house in West Suss.e.x. There, surrounded by the green, rolling hills of the South Downs, he tried to settle to his writing; but as the days pa.s.sed he found himself increasingly distracted by the news from Saigon. Only forty-eight hours after Naomi had left, the Communist forces smashed into Qui Nhon, Nha Trang and Dalat, encountering little resistance from the dispirited government forces, and as he listened to the radio news roll call of cities falling one after the other to the North Vietnamese onslaught, Joseph's mind was flooded with memories; he recalled the desperate journey he had made with Lan beside him in the OSS jeep in 1945, driving nonstop northwards along the old Mandarin Way above the beautiful white beaches and azure seas of Nha Trang and Qui Nhon. The fall of Dalat on April 2 plunged him into a new bitter-sweet bout of reminiscence as he recalled the exhilaration they'd shared at the Lang-Biang Palace in 1954, and this in turn stirred stark recollections of her awful death before his eyes in Saigon only a few weeks later. Eventually these thoughts became oppressive, inducing in him a dark sense of foreboding about Naomi's safe return, and he found himself waiting with increasing anxiety for her telephone calls. She rang him two or three times a week from the Continental Palace, but the calls were - invariably subject to frustrating delays and over the crackling line she was able to say little of what she'd seen of the fighting. In the end she confined herself to repeated a.s.surances that she was safe and keeping out of danger, but as time p.i.s.sed these stilted conversations, instead of setting his fears at rest, made Joseph more uneasy.

By the end of the first week in April, the Communists were tightening a military noose around Saigon. Less than a hundred thousand battle-ready government troops faced some three hundred thousand North Vietnamese, whose spearhead had moved to within forty miles of the capital at Xuan Loc, and as far as Joseph could see the only hope seemed to lie in the possibility that Hanoi might prefer to negotiate and have their troops appear in the streets as liberators rather than military conquerors. From Was.h.i.+ngton he listened anxiously to reports that President Ford was trying to persuade Congress that a fresh 750-million-dollar dose of military aid might save Saigon -but as the days slipped by the legislators on Capitol Hill remained adamant, fiercely protective of their new power in the wake of Richard Nixon's "imperial presidency."

Listening to news of this calamitous train of events hour by hour on his shortwave radio amidst the hills of southern England, Joseph became too distracted to work. He began rising before dawn and driving the few miles to the ancient cathedral city of Chichester to buy extra newspapers as soon as they arrived at the railway station. Ill-at-ease, he wandered restlessly through the paddocks and formal gardens of the eighteenth-century manor house between news broadcasts and telephone calls from Naomi, and after President Thieu's resignation on April 21 had signaled the end was near, he began to take longer walks outside the grounds, tramping blindly across the surrounding hills, oblivious to the green shoots of spring speckling the branches of the trees above his head and the ground around his feet. A frown of anxiety became a permanent expression on his suntanned face, and he walked with hunched shoulders and the jerky, uncoordinated stride of a man abstracted by events beyond his control.

Unknown to Joseph, in those same days many thousands of miles away in Hanoi, the brother of the girl who had first made his spirit a hostage to Vietnam's fortunes four decades before was suffering similar symptoms of anxiety. While Joseph strode daily through the South Downs, Tran Van Kim was pacing anxiously back and forth across the uncarpeted floor of one of the austere offices set aside for the use of Politburo members in the Party Headquarters of the Lao Dong. His fears, however, although shaped by the same events, were for his own safety.

The realization that his career and possibly his life were in jeopardy had come to him only gradually. The frantic day and night round of meetings and consultations that had followed the unexpected success of the He) Chi Minh offensive in late March and early April had proved exhausting and at first he had been too tired to read the warning signals. He had taken a full part in the early discussions, and with experience born of long observation of his old mentor Ho Chi Minh, who had died in September 1969, he had been careful not to commit himself fully to either of the two extreme views which had quickly polarized the Politburo. One faction wanted to hazard everything at once in an all-out drive on Saigon, while the remaining members advocated caution and restraint, and seeing that opinion was equally divided, he had managed to praise and criticize both points of view equally. Because he was so confident that he was pursuing the wisest course, he didn't take it amiss that he was never called on to make an unequivocal statement of his views, and it was some days before he realized that he was no longer being asked to voice any opinion at all.

After the victory of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the resignation of Nguyen Van Thieu, the tempo of the meetings had increased dramatically. The corridors of the Party Headquarters were filled at all hours of the day and night with bustling functionaries in high-collared tunics who rushed frantically from one meeting to another bearing sheafs of top-secret papers. It was then, when his own schedule of meetings slackened abruptly, that he had felt the first stab of sickening fear; he was being excluded completely from all top-level counsels about future policy in the South - and that could mean only one thing!

Left idle in his room for hours on end, he began frantically to search his memory for some unconscious transgression. His relations.h.i.+p with Ho Chi Minh had been personal and intimate for more than thirty years and he had always known that he owed his place in the Politburo to this fact above all else. He had antic.i.p.ated a gradual diminution of his influence in the years following Ho's death, but he had always felt confident that the prestige and intimate knowledge of party affairs he had gained during three decades as the leader's close confidant would guarantee his position. He had been aware that the amount of time he had spent with Ho had been a cause of envy among other Politburo members, and General Vo Nguyen Giap in particular, in the later years of Ho's life, had begun to treat him with a cold reserve. As he paced his office at the beginning of the last week in April 1975, Kim concluded that the direct threat would almost certainly come from the defense minister who was supervising the overall strategy for the offensive; he tried obliquely to approach one or two members of the party's ruling body who had been most friendly to him in the past in an effort to discover if he was being linked with others in some large-scale purge; but all cold- shouldered him, confirming his worst apprehensions - he was alone, suddenly and inexplicably a political outcast!

Barely able to sleep or eat, it came almost as a relief on the morning of Tuesday, April 21, when he received a summons to the office of the head of the party's Control Commission who was responsible for internal party discipline. The thin-faced cadre, who had always shown him great deference while Ho Chi Minh was alive, didn't rise when he entered his office or invite him to be seated; instead he addressed him in a curt voice without looking up from his papers.

"Your fellow members of the Politburo of the great and glorious Lao Dong Party have instructed me to make certain things known to you, comrade," said the cadre. "As you know, the party is on the brink of an historic victory which will bring our southern brethren under our control for the first time. This is a period when the highest self-discipline will be required of all comrades at all levels. Many difficulties and hazards lie ahead, and it will not be an easy task to change the capitalist ways of the southern people and bring them into line with the discipline of our own socialist society. It has been agreed unanimously that anybody who lacks total dedication to the cause cannot be tolerated in the highest echelons of our party at a time like this. It has been further agreed that anybody who is likely to betray our goals in the South because of misguided personal loyalties is not to be trusted and must be discarded at once!"

Kim stared at the bowed head of the cadre, who was reading everything he said in a toneless voice from a typewritten sheet on the desk before him. He knew he was being invited to condemn himself from his own mouth, but he couldn't understand why. "I've dedicated my whole life to the party," he said in an injured tone. "Of what am I accused?"

Without replying, the cadre pushed across the desk a typewritten report to which two photographs were fastened. Kim picked them up, but at first the Paris apartment building at the corner of Avenue Leopold II and Rue La Fontaine shown in the top one meant nothing to him. Then in the second picture he recognized the back view of himself stepping into the doorway to be greeted by his brother Tam, and with his heart hammering at his ribs he turned to the report and read the agent's account of how he had been followed to the Sixteenth Arrondiss.e.m.e.nt.

"It was nothing more than a personal meeting," he said in a barely audible whisper as he let the report fall onto the desk top. "There was no discussion whatsoever of political matters.

The cadre looked blankly back at him. "It has been decided that you will present yourself at the Party Interrogation Center at Phuc Yen at four o'clock this afternoon for further examination of the facts. A car will be provided for your convenience but no driver will be available. You must drive yourself - take the northern route. That is all."

Kim returned slowly to his own office, moving along the gloomy corridors like a somnambulist. Whether the evidence shown to him was the real reason for his fall from favor, he didn't know; perhaps it was being used to cover some personal spite or other, some lingering envy of his past prominence. Bitter feuds at the top party level, he knew from experience, were often rooted in personal dislikes, and he cursed himself for his foolishness in giving potential enemies sufficient ammunition to condemn him. For half an hour he sat hunched at his desk, staring dully at his empty wooden doc.u.ment trays; then gathering himself, he glanced at his watch and found it was already two o'clock. After a moment's thought, he drew two sheets of blank paper from a drawer and began writing rapidly. When he had covered both pages in closely s.p.a.ced scrawl, he sealed them in an envelope and used a telephone to summon a junior aide from an adjoining office.

"Take this to my niece, Trinh, at the munitions factory," he told the youth sharply. "Deliver it in person without fail at once. Tell her it's most urgent."

"Yes, Comrade Kim." The youth acknowledged the order in an anxious voice and made to leave, but at the door he halted and turned to look uncertainly at his superior. "Is anything wrong, Comrade Kim? You look unwell."

Kim stared at him hopelessly for a moment. "Go quickly. And when you've delivered the note don't come back here. Go somewhere you won't be found!"

The youth's face turned pale. "Why, Comrade Kim? Why?"

"Because I've been ordered to Phuc Yen for interrogation. Now go before it's too late."

Half an hour later Kim walked down to the motor compound at the rear of the building and stepped into a Russian-made Moskwa saloon that had been brought to the door for him by an overalled mechanic. He drove the car carefully through the city and across the Red River Bridge, heading for Phuc Yen which lay thirty miles northwest of Hanoi on the slopes of the Red River valley. As he drove alongside the Lake of the Restored Sword, he wondered briefly whether he would ever see the twin paG.o.das on their little islands again then he noticed in his rearview mirror another Moskwa with three plainclothes security men following him openly. All along the winding highway that climbed steeply up the valley, they remained at an even distance behind him, making no effort at all to conceal their presence, and his hands began to tremble on the wheel. As he drove he kept a constant watch in his rearview mirror - but the trail of oil dripping from the puncture made in the Moskwa's hydraulic system by the overalled mechanic was too fine to detect, and he remained unaware that his brakes had been rendered useless.

Because of the long gradient, he didn't try to slow the car until he was running down a long steep slope on the far side of the first big hill outside the city. The road swung sharply away from a high cliff, and he applied his foot to the brake for the first time as the Moskwa sped down towards the bend. To his horror, the unresisting pedal went right down to the floorboards without altering his speed, and the car raced on towards a yawning gap in the retaining fence that he could see, from the freshly broken wood, had been made very recently. In the instant before the vehicle hurtled out over the cliff edge, Kim remembered the last words his father had spoken to him on that night long ago in Saigon when he had flung the ten-piastre note contemptuously in his face. ". . . In the end, Kim, if Bolshevism succeeds you'll bring down ruination on your country, your family - and yourself. .

The car spun in the air and fell a hundred feet before it struck a projecting spur of rock and exploded. It bounced against the cliff face again lower down then sprang outwards, showering debris and burning petrol in all directions before the turbulent waters of the Red River finally swallowed it up and quenched the angry flames.

Three days later at the old manor house in a fold of the South Downs, Joseph was woken from a troubled sleep at three AM, by the ringing of his bedside telephone. When he lifted the receiver he recognized Naomi's excited voice at once but had difficulty understanding her on the poor line.

"Darling, there's ... been.. . a. . . purge.. . in.. . the. . . Lao Dong . .. Politburo," she said, pausing deliberately after each word because of the crackling line. "A French journalist in Hanoi has been given the story by a very unusual source."

Joseph rubbed his bleary eyes and sat up in bed. "Very interesting," he shouted back. "But why wake me in the middle of the night to tell me this?"

"Please listen, Joseph! This is very important. It's Tran Van Kim who's been purged - he may even be dead. The journalist got the story from a distraught Vietnamese girl who came to his office. She asked him privately to contact you. She said her name was Trinh and she's traveling south to Saigon in three days' time. She said she needs your help."

Joseph sat bolt upright suddenly as the significance of Naomi's words sank in. "Trinh, did you say? Tuyet's daughter?"

"Yes," shouted Naomi, "it seems so. What do you want me to do I'll do anything you say."

Joseph's knuckles whitened on the telephone receiver. "Don't 'do anything," he shouted. "Nothing at all."

"Why not?" asked Naomi in a puzzled voice. "Why on earth not?"

"Because I'm coming to Saigon myself!"

He slammed down the telephone, dressed quickly and ran to the study where he kept his pa.s.sport. Without waiting to pack a bag or turn out the lights of the house, he hurried outside to the garage. Within ten minutes of receiving Naomi's call, he was driving fast through the country lanes of Suss.e.x heading for London to catch the First available flight to the Far East. The dawn of Friday, April 25, 1975, was breaking over the western reaches of the capital as he took off four hours later from Heathrow Airport on the first leg of his journey to the beleaguered city of Saigon that had only five days left to live.

7.

Three days later on the afternoon of Monday, April 28, 1975, a heavy pall of saturated air blanketed the capital of South Vietnam. The ominously dark clouds that heralded the first monsoon downpour of the new wet season had been growing blacker hour by hour since dawn, but although it seemed constantly to be on the point of explosion, the gathering storm stubbornly refused to break. As a result, an electric tension descended on the streets, and in the luminous, gray light three and a half million people caught fast in the tightening circle of Communist armor were able to see clearly the telltale lines of fear etched deep into one another's faces. Hurrying on foot through the heart of the city towards Doc Lap Palace, Joseph could hear the distant rumble of an artillery barrage being laid down on the main South Vietnamese airbase of Bien Hoa, eighteen miles away. The noise of the barrage was interspersed from time to time with sounds of thunder that grew gradually louder, and Joseph noticed that the people he pa.s.sed gazed up constantly at the sky, obviously wondering when the bombardment of the capital would begin.

After weeks of growing apprehension the people trapped in Saigon had become openly fearful because they knew that with twenty-one Communist divisions ringing the city, the single remaining division of disciplined ARVN troops would have no hope of defending them. Faced with this hopeless military situation, South Vietnam's tottering government was preparing to swear in its second new president in the s.p.a.ce of six days in the hope that he might prove more acceptable to the Communists; but rumors of the move had already spread through the streets and few who'd heard it held out much hope that this last desperate political gamble would succeed in saving the city. Hanoi's leaders had augmented their forces and maneuvered them into position with slow deliberation during the second half of April so as to give themselves time to destroy South Vietnam's political leaders.h.i.+p beyond repair; to ensure that President Thieu didn't flee abroad and set up a government in exile which might compromise their eventual control of the South, they had given hints through their Camp Davis representatives at Tan Son Nhut that they might accept a negotiated settlement if he stepped down formally from the presidency. But after tricking Was.h.i.+ngton into forcing him to resign, they had immediately made new demands: they insisted that the vice-president who succeeded Thieu should in turn be replaced by the neutralist figure General Duong Van Minh, and because this seemed to offer a slender hope of preventing the total destruction of Saigon, the South Vietnamese had hastily agreed.

The swearing-in ceremony for Big Minh had been set for the late afternoon, and Joseph reached Doc Lap Palace just after five o'clock in time to watch the ineffectual Buddhist general, who had played a leading role in the American-inspired overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem, march sad-faced into the main reception hall. The brocade and plush chamber hung with huge crystal chandeliers was already filled with an audience of two hundred Vietnamese army officers and politicians who had records of opposition to the Thieu regime, and they watched with silent apprehension as President Minh stepped onto a podium decorated with his own personal crest - a representation of Yin and Yang, the symbolic harmonious opposites of Asian philosophy that emphasized his wish for reconciliation with his Communist enemies. Joseph pushed his way through the crowd of a hundred or so journalists at the back of the hall to where Naomi stood tense beside her camera crew, directing the filming of the proceedings. A steel helmet dangled from her left hand, and she still wore an olive green flak jacket like most of the other correspondents who were das.h.i.+ng to and from the front lines of a war that had moved to within a few minutes' drive of their city center hotels. Together they listened to Big Minh in an agony of concentration, trying to a.s.sess whether this last-ditch change of leaders.h.i.+p would give Joseph a few extra hours to find Trinh.

"You must have realized that the situation is very critical," Minh began, speaking in a voice that cracked frequently with emotion. "Tragic things are occurring minute by minute, second by second in our country, and we're paying dearly for our mistakes with our blood, I'm deeply distressed by these events and I feel a responsibility now to seek a cease-fire and bring peace on the basis of the Paris Agreements The coming days will be very difficult. I cannot promise you much Joseph shook his head in frustration and Naomi, glancing around, saw that his face was gray with fatigue. During the forty-eight hours since his arrival in Saigon, he had barely slept. Day and night he had roamed the city, searching out the haunts of old Viet Minh and Viet Cong contacts among the maze of back alleys and shanty slums lining the ca.n.a.ls. He had begun by offering substantial bribes to the venal waiters and doormen at the Continental Palace, the Caravelle and other big hotels; these men, he knew, were Viet Cong informers of long standing, and he promised them more money if they could tell him how he could contact Dang Thi Trinh, an important new cadre of the Provisional Revolutionary Government who had left Hanoi five days ago to come south to take up special duties in Saigon. He had slipped hundred-dollar bills un.o.btrusively into their hands and sometimes discreetly showed them copies of his old OSS photographs taken with Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap in 1945. In his desperation to find Trinh, he lied blatantly without any sense of shame. He was a writer sympathetic to the Communist cause, he said, and he had reason to believe that Comrade Trinh bore important confidential information that the leaders.h.i.+p of the Lao Dong in Hanoi wished him to receive; it was of vital importance to the party that she contact him the moment she arrived from the north.

The waiters had watched and listened with suspicious eyes, then after holding out for further bribes, had supplied names and addresses that took him with agonizing slowness along secret chains of command that led through the muddy lanes and into the reeking boat dwellings of the city slums. Wary eyes and monosyllabic grunts had greeted his inquiries everywhere in the dark and dingy meeting places. Careless of his own safety he even went at night into villages beyond the city limits when contacts were arranged there, certain he was moving higher up the secret Viet Cong hierarchy; but frustratingly he came to a halt on the second night at what he judged was the middle level of command - and none of the contacts admitted to any knowledge of Trinh's existence.

On Sunday he had ostentatiously attended all the services at Saigon Cathedral, where over the years Viet Cong go-betweens had made surrept.i.tious contacts with foreign journalists whenever it suited them; but not once had he been approached. On Monday morning, growing ever more desperate, he had driven out to Tan Son Nhut airport and visited Camp Davis, the fortified compound where as a result of the 1973 Paris Agreements a representational contingent of two hundred troops of the People's Army of North Vietnam was stationed along with a smaller group of Viet Cong officials of the Provisional Revolutionary Government. In theory they were there to supervise the 1973 cease-fire, but it was common knowledge that the North Vietnamese officers were disguised political cadres from Hanoi, and for two years they had given bizarre press conferences every Sat.u.r.day morning to promote Hanoi's propaganda line. On his way there Joseph saw for the first time the growing crowds of Vietnamese waiting for evacuation flights on big U.S. Air Force C-I3os that were lifting off the run*ay at regular intervals. The gymnasium of the American Defense Attache's Office had been turned into a refugee processing center, and the sight of anxious men, women and children clutching bags of possessions as they waited to leave the country had heightened Joseph's own feelings of alarm. On an impulse he had decided to reveal the real nature of his interest in Trinh to the Hanoi colonel who commanded Camp Davis, and he sent in a short note with his OSS photograph giving Trinh's full name and his reasons for wis.h.i.+ng to find her. The narrow- eyed officer who received him half an hour later had listened impa.s.sively to his story, then shaken his head. "I have no knowledge of any of these things of which you speak," he told him coldly, then summoned an aide to show him out.

The ranks of refugees lining up to leave had been swollen considerably by the time Joseph left Tan Son Nhut, and the small contingent of United States Marines that had been flown in a week before to police the evacuation was having difficulty persuading panicky Vietnamese not to block the approaches to the airport with their abandoned vehicles. On his way back into Saigon, Joseph had become trapped in an impenetrable traffic jam of army trucks and other military vehicles and had parked his rented car and begun to walk. Before long he found himself in Bui Phat, one of the areas where Communist rockets had struck the city at dawn that day, leveling a whole street of huddled tin roof shanties; smoke was still rising from ruins which had been swept by swathes of fire, and dead bodies and the mutilated living were still being unearthed from the wrecked homes. Small groups of sobbing relatives and stunned onlookers stood watching, and as he approached the corner of the ruined street, Joseph saw one badly burned victim of the raid being dragged from beneath the shattered remains of a corrugated lean-to hut.

He watched with a growing sense of horror as two soldiers tugged at a pair of charred ankles and the rest of the body came free with a faintly audible groan. Convinced suddenly that the victim was a young girl, he ran forward with an involuntary cry; the trunk and limbs were black and blistered, all the hair had been burned from the head, and clear brown eyes, wide with agony, were rolling uncontrollably. The charred lips were moving without making any sounds, and Joseph grabbed a water bottle from one of the soldiers and made them lower their burden while he poured a few drops of liquid into the scorched throat. There was another faint moan of agony as a spasm of pain shook the body, and Joseph saw then that most of the victim's clothing had been burned to nothing in the all-consuming fire. What he had imagined were black trousers were in reality blistered skin, and he saw then that the dying Vietnamese was a male youth, and despite his deep feelings of horror, a flood of relief swept over him. A moment later the youth shuddered and moaned one last time before he died, and the two South Vietnamese soldiers, who had been waiting with expressions of impatient hostility on their faces, continued their gruesome task of disposing of the anonymous corpse.

Joseph stood for a long time among the ruins created by the rockets, as stunned suddenly 'as the local people all around him by the realization that the war was closing inexorably at last on the city that for most of the past thirty years had led a charmed existence amid the b.l.o.o.d.y battles being fought all around it. With the exception of the Tet Offensive seven years earlier and an isolated rocket attack in 1971, the capital of South Vietnam had always remained an island of relative peace in a restless sea of war, but as the day wore on and the monsoon clouds darkened over the city, the certainty that the end was near seemed to become something tangible in the air. The vision of that charred male corpse returned to haunt Joseph's memory hour by hour as he continued his search for Trinh, and it gradually became a recurring symbol of fear and dread. He began thinking of it again as he listened to Duong Van Minh's despairing speech because it was soon clear from what he said that the mind of South Vietnam's new president must also be filled with similar thoughts. Addressing the "Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam" directly by its own declared name for the first time, he said that all the people now wanted "reconciliation" above all else; but the tone of his voice suggested he held out little hope that he Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese would make many concessions now that outright military victory was within their grasp.

"Reconciliation requires that each element of the nation respect the other's right to live," said Minh, struggling to inject conviction into his words. "We should all sit down together and work out a solution. I propose from this podium that we stop all aggression against each other forthwith." The burly general paused and drew a long breath without looking at his audience, well aware that he was speaking via the live television broadcast to many ears beyond the hall. "I hope with all my heart that this suggestion will meet with approval At that moment the whole palace was shaken by an elemental explosion; brilliant Hashes lit the sky outside and curtained doors leading to the patios were blown open. A mighty rush of wind lashed rain into the chamber as the first monsoon storm broke with great violence, and when the doors had been secured again President Minh had to raise his voice to make himself heard above the continuing crash of thunder.

"In past days, fellow citizens," he said, his face more stricken than before, "you may have noticed that many people have been quietly leaving the country. Well, I want to remind all our citizens that this is our beloved land. Please be courageous; stay and accept the fate of G.o.d Thunder crashed and rolled deafeningly once again, and Minh had to wait until it died away; then he raised his eyes beseechingly to the audience once more. "Please remain and stay together - rebuild South Vietnam! Build an independent Vietnam, democratic and prosperous, so Vietnamese will live with Vietnamese in brotherhood." He paused one last time and gazed around the hail, a brave man fully aware that he was about to be engulfed by one of history's irresistible tides. "Thank you very much," he added quietly at last, but the words never reached the ears of his listeners because they were drowned in another thunderclap.

As the gathering began to break up, Naomi moved to Joseph's side and squeezed his arm consolingly; his face was drawn and he raised his shoulders in a resigned shrug. Many times since his arrival he had quizzed Naomi about the message she had received From the French journalist, and she had gone over it patiently again and again for him: a girl called Trinh had contacted the Agence France Presse representative in Hanoi to tell him of Kim's disappearance after his dismissal from the Politburo. In exchange for the information, she had asked that he contact Joseph Sherman in confidence and say that her great-uncle had arranged for her to be infiltrated to the South as a cadre of the Provisional Revolutionary Government; she feared for her future in the North, she had said, with Kim in disgrace. As the North Vietnamese army was likely to win victory in the South any day, she had felt she would have no future there either; that was why she wanted Joseph to help her get out of Vietnam. There had been no party announcement about Kim, but the French journalist had later learned from a reliable informant that he had died in a car crash.

"Please don't look so worried, Joseph," said Naomi quietly. "Perhaps Trinh's been delayed on the journey. It's probably chaos on the roads in the Communist areas too."

Joseph didn't answer. He was staring over her shoulder at the crowd of National a.s.sembly delegates milling beneath the great chandeliers, discussing Minh's speech.

"What is it?" she asked, turning to follow his gaze.

"Tran Van Tam! Look there, chatting with the new prime minister. Still the perfect political chameleon! Somehow he must have managed to make the transition from Thieu's regime to the neutralists." Joseph hurried over to the Vietnamese, and when Tam turned to find him at his elbow, he offered his hand.

"So you've come to witness the final act of our national tragedy, Joseph, have you?" He spoke quietly so that his voice did not carry to those around him and smiled sadly. "We've done all we can but we've got no bargaining power left. At most the swearing- in of the new president will win us a little time."

Joseph nodded. "But what about your personal plans, Tam? Will you be among those answering the call to stay and accept the fate of G.o.d?"

The Vietnamese giggled nervously and glanced around him again before answering "I'd like to respond patriotically, but like many others I'm afraid of what the Communists will do. I've already taken the precaution of sending my wife and family out of the country to Thailand."

"Have you managed to export some of your wealth too?"asked Joseph quietly.

Tam giggled again with embarra.s.sment. "Certain precautions have been taken, yes."

"And how do you plan to get out yourself? The crowds are growing at the airport."

"Your amba.s.sador has always been a good friend to me."

Tam's face creased into a calculated smile. "I've always done my best, you see, to give him my independent view of the affairs of our government. As a token of his grat.i.tude he's offered to guarantee me a seat on one of his helicopters if a sudden evacuation becomes necessary."

"And how did you manage to escape being tarred permanently with President Thieu's brush?"

"A judicious resignation from my post at the Ministry of Information a few weeks ago - when it became clear which way the wind was blowing," Tam allowed himself another smile. "But tell me, are you writing another book? Is that what's brought you back to Saigon again at this dangerous time?"

Joseph shook his head. "No, Tam, as a matter of fact I came because of what happened to your brother', Kim, in Hanoi. I was sorry to hear the news."

Tam sighed and shook his head. "The circ.u.mstances of his death are very strange, hut I don't understand how it affects you."

"Perhaps you didn't know, hut Tuyet and her son were killed in the 1972 Christmas bombing. Her daughter Trinh survived. Your brother, Kim, was her only relative in Hanoi, and now that he's gone she's alone and frightened. Kim told her beforehand, it seems, how to get a message to me through a French journalist in Hanoi and also arranged papers for her so that she could be quietly infiltrated into Saigon with other northern cadres."

Tam's eyes widened. "And you've come here to look for her to take her out of Vietnam?"

Joseph nodded grimly. "But I can't find her, Tam. I've tried all the contacts I know. There's no trace of her." An edge of desperation had entered his voice. "Do you know anybody on the other side who might help?"

A defensive expression came into the eyes of the Vietnamese. "I don't think so - I'm very sorry. Like many others I have affairs of my own still to arrange."

Tam made as if to move off, but Joseph seized him by the shoulders and swung him around. "Trinh's your flesh and blood too Tam! A man like you must have private contacts with the Viet Cong." Joseph paused and his expression hardened suddenly. "Maybe I should mention that to the amba.s.sador and have him cancel your helicopter seat!"

Tam's face turned pale and he laughed nervously. For a moment he stared at Joseph in alarm, then his face brightened.

"Why don't you consult your friend in the 'white room'?"

Joseph stared at Tam, thunderstruck. "What do you know about the man in the white room?"

"Your brother Guy told me he took you to the cell to try to identify him. He thought you recognized him from the old days in Tongking but refused to reveal what you knew."

Joseph shook his head in disbelief; seven years had pa.s.sed since he had visited that blinding white cell where the s.h.i.+vering skeleton of Dao Van Lat had been incarcerated. "Is he still there?" he asked in an incredulous voice.

Tam nodded. "Yes, and still his will hasn't been broken - they gave up interrogating him long ago. He's never divulged anything about the Liberation Front's organization but now that the end is near perhaps he might make an exception - for an old comrade-in-arms who showed him loyalty in the past."

"It's worth trying!" Joseph grasped Tam by the shoulders. "Arrange with your security people for me to visit him -with the cameras and microphones switched off."

Tam nodded quickly. "I'll make some telephone calls at once. Please wait at your hotel until you hear from me."

8.

Twenty-four hours later in the early evening of Tuesday, April 29,Joseph was squatting on his heels beside the white stool in the center of the white room, staring with increasing desperation into the face of the shrunken skeleton that its prisoner had become. The skin on Lat's face and body seemed to have contracted during the long years in the chilled atmosphere, drawing itself tight across his bones and making his face skull-like. His hair had turned white like everything else in the room, his eyes were unnaturally large and luminous in their hollow sockets, and he leaned forward at the waist, hugging himself with his sticklike arms just as he had done when Joseph had last seen him in 1968. He still wore only a ragged pair of shorts and his wasted body seemed to have barely enough flesh on it to sustain life, but as before he seemed totally oblivious to his suffering and sat unmoving and incurious on his stool, his gaze fixed blankly on the white wall in front of him.

"Please listen to me, Lat. The war's almost over," said Joseph patiently, repeating himself for the second time. "The microphones have already been switched off, and you and all the other political prisoners are going to be set free later this evening by President Minh. Your forces are certain to win total victory within twenty-four hours. They're approaching the outskirts of Saigon already - but you must help me before they get here!"

Joseph sat back on his haunches to study Lat's face again, but the Vietnamese gave no sign that he had heard; instead he continued to stare straight in front of him, his eyes unblinking, and Joseph wondered with a stab of alarm if he had lost his reason entirely.

"Your nephew Tran Van Kim is dead, Lat." Joseph leaned closer, straining every nerve in his body to break the trancelike state into which the Vietnamese seemed to have sunk. "He was dismissed in disgrace from the Politburo and died in a car crash a week ago. That's why I need your help." He tugged from his pocket again the photographs of Tuyet as a young girl that he'd held up twice already before Lat's eyes. "I fell in love with Kim's sister, Lan - your niece - in the 'thirties. We had a daughter, Tuyet. She grew up to become Tuyet Luong, who served your cause well in the delta. Maybe you never knew she was related to you - but look, here she is, standing with me outside her school in Saigon!"

Joseph again pushed the photographs in front of Lat's eyes and waited. He had shown him the pictures of himself with Ho and Vo Nguyen Giap as soon as he arrived and recalled how they themselves had first met in Hue in 1925. He had reminded the Vietnamese how he had poled him downriver on a raft to the Pac Bo caves after his Warhawk had crashed, but Lat had still not betrayed the slightest sign of comprehension.

"Tuyet Luong was killed in the Christmas bombing of Hanoi three years ago," continued Joseph, speaking slowly as though to a child, "but she had a daughter, Trinh, who survived - you're her great-great-uncle. Kim cared for her after her mother was killed, but now Kim's dead she has n.o.body in the North. She's asked me to help her - she wants to leave Vietnam with me but I can't trace her. Kim arranged for her to be infiltrated into Saigon as a cadre of the Provisional Revolutionary Government but I need the name of the P.R.G. security chief so that I can ask him to find her for me. Can't you help?"

Joseph gazed imploringly into Lat's face as he finished speaking, but the Vietnamese remained motionless on his stool as though he were alone in the cell, and Joseph stood up with a snort of exasperation. Glancing at his watch he saw that it was already after six o'clock, and forgetting for a moment that the cell was sound-proofed, he strained his ears, trying to hear the engines of the American helicopters from the Seventh Fleet that had begun their ma.s.sive final evacuation operation at midday. As he hurried to the old Surete Generale headquarters from his hotel, he had seen the Sea Stallions, Chinooks arid Jolly Green Giants lumbering across the rooftops, lifting out load after load of the thousand or so Americans still stranded in Saigon. Two departure areas had been set up one on a tennis court at Tan Son Nhut, the other on the lawn inside the United States Emba.s.sy compound - and the helicopters were shuttling back and forth to the forty American s.h.i.+ps cruising offsh.o.r.e in the South China Sea. Smaller, silver-painted helicopters of the CIA's airline, Air America, had been visible darting among the vapor trails of the bigger aircraft, plucking from rooftops little knots of Americans and Vietnamese who feared that they faced death or imprisonment at the hands of the Communists because of their close links with the United States. As it became obvious that many Vietnamese who wanted to leave would be left behind, signs of panic had become visible everywhere in the city, and remembering this, Joseph began pacing agitatedly back and forth across the white cell.

Within minutes of the swearing-in of President Minh the previous afternoon, it had become evident that this last humiliating political concession had been made in vain. Before the politicians had even dispersed from Doc Lap Palace, captured aircraft flown by North Vietnamese pilots had begun dive-bombing the Tan Son Nhut airbase, destroying within a few minutes South Vietnam's last vestige of air power. The same planes had then swooped on the center of Saigon and the deafening roar of aircraft rus.h.i.+ng low across the rooftops with their wing cannons pumping had plunged the capital into chaos. Antiaircraft guns had opened up from the palace grounds and anyone in possession of an automatic rifle had begun shooting indiscriminately in the streets, convinced that the Viet Cong had launched their final a.s.sault by stealth. With the bewildering noise of warfare filling the tree-lined boulevards, Joseph and Naomi had taken shelter with hundreds of others on the stone floor of the cathedral. A twenty-four-hour curfew had been declared, trapping them there until the late evening, and when they emerged they discovered that through their spokesmen at Camp Davis, the Communists had again made fresh political demands which quite clearly sounded the death knell for Saigon. President Minh's government must "declare its support for the revolution," they had said, and all Americans must withdraw immediately from Vietnam. They had indicated contemptuously that the final attack on Saigon would begin at midnight on Tuesday, April 29, and any American not evacuated by then would have to suffer the consequences.

A few hours later the North Vietnamese forces had launched their heaviest rocket barrage of the war against Tan Son Nhut. One of the fleet of giant C-13o aircraft of the United States Air Force that had been ferrying out refugees to Guam was destroyed on the runway, there were many casualties among the thousands of Vietnamese still waiting in the processing center, and two young American Marines of the evacuation security force were killed by the rockets. It was these American combat deaths coming two years after the United States' withdrawal from Vietnam that had caused an anxious President Ford in Was.h.i.+ngton to abandon the airlift with fixed-wing planes from Tan Son Nhut and order the immediate launching of the helicopter evacuation, code-named "Operation Frequent Wind."

As a result the sound of axes and saws attacking the gnarled bole of the ancient tamarind tree on the front lawn of the American Emba.s.sy at midmorning had symbolized the United States' final admission that its efforts to save South Vietnam from Communism had failed. The lawn was the only area within the emba.s.sy where the great helicopters could put down with safety, and Joseph had watched the tamarind fall as he left the Chancery building at about ten-thirty that morning. Inside the emba.s.sy he had contacted people he knew manning the CIA station on the upper floors to secure a promise of a place in one of the last helicopters for himself and Trinh, and soon afterwards the prearranged secret signal for the start of the evacuation had been broadcast over the American Armed Forces radio. Every fifteen minutes the announcer intoned: "The temperature in Saigon is 105 degrees and rising," and the announcement was followed immediately by Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas."

Immediately all those foreigners who had been pre-warned by the evacuation organizers at the U.S. Emba.s.sy - journalists, businessmen, civilian engineers, contractors - had hurried to their appointed a.s.sembly areas around the city; some boarded buses for the airport, others climbed to the flat roofs of apartment buildings where the Air America helicopters could land. Shortly before eleven AM. the exodus of the international press corps had begun and doors had started banging like gunfire suddenly in the corridors of the Continental Palace, the Caravelle, the Majestic and other hotels as Americans representing the New York Times, the Was.h.i.+ngton Post, Time, Newsweek and the television networks rushed out lugging portable typewriters and camera equipment. Other newspapers and television reporters from a dozen other Western countries - "TCNs" or "Third Country Nationals" in the jargon of the airlift organizers -- went too, trooping to their a.s.sembly points through streets and squares left eerily deserted by the twenty-four-hour curfew.

Most of the American journalists had visited Joseph's room before they left, shaking their heads apologetically; as soon as he arrived in Saigon he had asked them all to let him know if they were contacted by a young Vietnamese girl asking for him, and as they prepared to leave, one after the other they came to shake hands and wish him well. After a lot of heated argument Joseph had insisted that Naomi leave with the members of her camera crew, and he had watched from a window of the Continental as the little procession of correspondents hurried away across the burning asphalt of Lam Son Square. Naomi turned one or twice, casting anxious eyes up at the window, but Joseph, unable to bear the thought of waving goodbye to her, had stepped quickly back out of sight. Feeling waves of tiredness sweep over him, he had stretched out on the bed then and fallen immediately into an exhausted sleep.

As they marched through empty streets, Naomi and the rest of the journalists warily eyed the South Vietnamese police and the holstered weapons on their belts; they had begun stringing barbed-wire barricades across the baking pavements and the journalists knew that their own raggle-taggle departure with all their equipment was providing undeniable confirmation that the United States was finally pulling out. Every Westerner in Saigon knew that Brigadier Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the Saigon chief of security who had shot a Viet Cong suspect in the head before television cameras in 1968, had issued a warning that if the Americans tried to leave alone, they wouldn't reach the airport alive. None of them knew then that Brigadier Loan was too busy arranging his own escape to carry out his b.l.o.o.d.y threat, but the expressions of resentment on the faces of the policemen as they pa.s.sed were enough to make the journalists feel ashamed and uneasy. At some helicopter departure points they found South Vietnamese soldiers had set up machine gun nests on adjoining rooftops and the little groups of press refugees immediately began searching for safer takeoff zones.

Because discipline among the police and the army was crumbling, the curfew was only patchily enforced, and around the ten-foot-high walls of the United States Emba.s.sy, a crowd of about two thousand Vietnamese had gathered by early afternoon. Yelling and screaming hysterically, many of them scrambled up the high steel gates, pleading with the Marine guards that they faced slaughter at the hands of the Communists if they did not get on the evacuation helicopters- but none were allowed in without proper authorization. While the Marines held the frightened crowd at bay at the front gates, high-ranking Vietnamese ministers and army officers waving special pa.s.ses slipped through a rear door of the compound to take their places quietly among the crowd of privileged evacuees waiting inside. From there they could see plumes of black smoke rising above Tan Son Nhut, which was still coming under intermittent rocket and mortar attack, and sounds of firing began to echo through the streets as order broke down all over Saigon. The giant Sikorsky Sea Stallions and Chinooks started fluttering in and Out of the emba.s.sy compound in mid-afternoon, collecting loads of sixty and seventy people at a time, and it was not long before scattered shots were being directed at them from among the crowd outside. Cobra guns.h.i.+ps bristling with weapons were called in to protect the landing zone, and Joseph, from his hotel window, had been able to watch them hovering ominously above the Chancery as the afternoon wore on.

When Tam's call finally came about five-thirty, Joseph had dashed straight to the security headquarters at the top of the Rue Catinat. The chief of police was already on his way out to the Seventh Fleet, Tam had explained, and a subordinate had been ordered to release all of the three hundred political prisoners still in custody at seven o'clock that evening. Tam had called the duty officer and arranged for Joseph to see the man in the white room alone - that was as much as he could do. Perhaps they would meet again in the United States, Tam had said with another characteristic giggle. He was leaving that moment for the emba.s.sy compound to catch his own flight, and he wished Joseph luck in his search.

Joseph had hung up without replying and run out of the room. In the streets he could hear that the rocket bombardment of Tan Son Nhut was being stepped up; little jeeploads of South Vietnamese troops were rus.h.i.+ng back and forth, the radios in the open vehicles crackling with angry fretful exchanges, and although Saigon had been cordoned off against refugees for more than two weeks to prevent a repet.i.tion of the chaos that had occurred farther north, crowds of peasants, with frightened children at their heels, were beginning to appear in the city center. Pus.h.i.+ng mattresses on handcarts, clutching suitcases or carrying poles hung with pots and pans, they were running blindly, not caring where they were going as long as they were getting away from the firestorms ignited by the Communist rockets around their old homes.

At the former French Surete headquarters Joseph had been conducted into the cellars by a hawk-faced security officer who was still in uniform. When he opened the door to the white cell for him, Joseph had waited before entering to see that he didn't stay to observe or reactivate the spy cameras and microphones which had been turned off. Once inside, it had taken Joseph a few seconds to get over the shock of Lat's appearance, and lie had spent a quarter of an hour crouched beside him going over his story, first in French, then in Vietnamese and finally in English.