Saigon: A Novel Part 9

As the rebels were melting away through the lac trees, Lieutenant Paul Devraux, duty officer for the evening, was pacing briskly across the courtyard of the citadel, his routine rounds finished. Broader in the shoulder than in the days when lie had a.s.sisted his father as a hunting guide, his proud bearing, the bright sheen on his belt and boots and his spotlessly whitened sun helmet all now reflected the uncompromising St. Cyr disciplines he had brought from Versailles to the hills of Tongking. Open-faced, ready to smile and more handsome than his father, he had emerged from three years at the French military academy as a young officer of high promise, but as he strode towards the guardhouse that night his brows were knitted in a persistent frown. Without knowing why, he had been left feeling ill at ease by the tour of inspection through the fort and the caserne, and as he walked he tried without success to pin down his apprehension.

During the past three months he had often found himself struggling to maintain the strict standards of St. Cyr in the hot, enervating climate of the remote fort town. To him the longer serving officers and NCOs of the garrison seemed to have become unnecessarily lax in their military habits, but because he was the most junior officer he had decided to say nothing and pay greater attention to his own self-discipline. Some of his brother officers had taken to teasing him openly about his youthful enthusiasm, but tonight he was sure his suspicions were not simply due to overzealousness. At the guardhouse he asked the gray-haired French sergeant if he'd noticed anything unusual, but the NCO merely yawned and shook his head as he took his ring of keys from him. On the point of descending to his quarters he hesitated at the opened gates of the fort. In the town below a few fires still flickered here and there along the darkened streets and the lights were going out as usual -- everything seemed normal, but the feeling that something was amiss persisted.

The fort was one of three built in an arc across the jungle-clad uplands of northern Tongking as a first line of defense for the city of Hanoi against invasion from across the Chinese border. Yen Bay, he knew from his studies at St. Cyr, had been designed by Marshal Joffre thirty years before he led French forces to a famous victory at the Battle of the Marne in 1914. Joffre had been an eager captain of engineers then, and the young lieutenant found himself reflecting suddenly that if the marshal's reputation had been forced to rest solely on the construction of the Yen Bay fort he would hardly have become a hero of France. Standing in the open gateway looking down at the officers' quarters and the caserne, both standing unprotected at the foot of the hill, he realized with a start how vulnerable the garrison was to surprise attack.

"Are you still worrying, Paul, about how you might turn the smelly tirailleurs of Yen Bay into a glittering praetorian guard fit for ceremonial duties at the Elysee Palace?" A friendly hand slapped him on the shoulder, and he turned to find himself looking into the grinning face of Lieutenant Francois Clichy, a young married Breton attached to the Eighth Company whose pretty young wife had just traveled out from France to join him.

"No, not really," replied Paul, trying to force a smile to his lips. Then his face become earnest again. "Francois, have you noticed anything strange about the way the men are behaving tonight?"

"Strange? Don't our smelly tirailleurs always behave strangely?" asked the married officer flippantly. "We know you think they're human, but it's a minority viewpoint, you must admit. Still, we forgive you. Living six years in Saigon and speaking their language is probably enough to turn anyone's head."

"I'm serious," insisted Paul. "I can't help feeling tonight that there's something going on."

"I'm sure there is - about a thousand illegal gambling games."

"That's just the point, Francois. None of them are gambling tonight. And you know how they usually descend on the town and terrorize the local barkeepers - well, almost none of them left camp tonight. All the men of the Seventh and Eighth here in the fort were sitting quietly on their mats looking very subdued when I made an unannounced inspection. Some of them were already asleep - or pretending to be. Down in the caserne it was the same story with the Fifth and the Sixth. No noisy gambling groups at all. A few of them were sitting huddled together talking in whispers but the rest were asleep - two hours early."

Lieutenant Clichy shrugged. "It doesn't sound that unusual to me. Have you reported your suspicions to the old man?"

Paul nodded glumly. "Yes, he was very curt. Like you he told me I still had a lot to learn about the s.h.i.+ftless natives. He said he was going to bed early and suggested I did too."

"That sounds like pretty good advice to me, Lieutenant Devraux." The young Breton laughed and slapped him on the shoulder again. "Why don't you follow it? I think I'm going to. It wouldn't be fair to keep my Monique waiting when she's just come all this way from Paris -to warn my sheets for me, would it?"

Paul smiled and wished him goodnight as he hurried off down the hillside. For a moment he stood peering into the shadows on the surrounding hills, but the clouds gathering in the night sky were beginning to blot out even the faint light from the stars. After ordering the sergeant to close and bar the gates, he walked down the hillside and, with his hand resting on the flap of his revolver holster, he strolled through the deserted streets of the town. But he saw nothing suspicious and returned slowly to his quarters. For half an hour he sat indecisively on his bed, cleaning and loading his revolver. Then he got up, pushed wedges under his door and dragged his wardrobe in front of it. Tucking his sheathed saber beneath his pillow, he lay down fully clothed on his bed and fell into a fitful sleep.

By midnight the shadows beneath the lac trees at the foot of the hill were as black as ink. When the Annamese rebels rea.s.sembled from their places of concealment, Limpid Stream had to use a shaded flashlight to check his wrist.w.a.tch. At exactly twelve o'clock he glanced out between the trunks of the lacs. The citadel and the caserne were silent and dark; no window remained lit.

"Giet! Giet!" he whispered urgently in the darkness. "Forward to kill!"

Ngo Van Hoc was standing obediently at his side, and as the cell leader uttered his command he tapped the boy lightly on the shoulder. Hoc felt his heart throb violently in his chest, then he ran forward, thrusting his ribbon-decked oriflamme towards the sky. Immediately the band of sixty rebels broke from the cover of the trees behind him, clutching their sabers and coupe-coupes. Swiftly and silently on their unshod feet they sped through the darkness towards their sleeping victims.

11.

Lieutenant Francois Clichy and his young wife, Monique, were peacefully asleep in one another's arms when Ngo Van Loc rushed into their bedroom with a half-a-dozen of the Quoc Dan Dang a.s.sa.s.sins at his heels. Because the girl newly arrived from France was finding the dark silence of the Tongking uplands disquieting, she had taken to leaving a child's night-light burning on a bedside table while they slept, and the sudden commotion in the room set its tiny flame dancing and guttering wildly.

Monique was wearing the same sheer nightdress that she had worn during their recent honeymoon in France, and a moment before they wrenched her from her husband's arms she opened her eyes and saw them; the hate-crazed faces, the red and gold silk bandanas around their foreheads, the crude sabers raised to strike all seemed to her like the stuff of a childhood nightmare. On the walls and ceiling behind them their giant shadows dwarfed them in the flickering candlelight, and she began screaming in terror. One of the attackers, to silence her, covered her mouth with his hand and dragged her from the bed, and on the instant of waking the lieutenant imagined a crowd of his drunken tirailleurs were attempting to rape his wife.

"Take your filthy hands off her, you fiends," he yelled, frantically struggling to free himself from the bedclothes. "How dare you come into our house!"

The sudden, unexpected sight of man and wife lying intimately together revived vividly in Ngo Van Loc his own unbearable sense of loss, and it was he who lunged forward to strike the first blow. His heavy saber wielded with two hands split the skull of the French officer, and as he collapsed across the bed Loc's Sons and the other rebels crowded in on him, the fear that had grown in them during the tense hours of waiting exploding at last in an uncontrolled burst of savagery.

Flailing at the lieutenant with their weapons in turn they ripped open his body from shoulder to groin and disemboweled him. They struck with such frenzy that the blood of their victim splashed on their own clothes and bodies, but still they didn't stop. When Ngo Van Loc finally pushed them aside, they turned wild-eyed in the direction of the girl they had just made a widow.

"No! Leave her!" shouted Loc sharply. "Remember the party's orders." He motioned for the man holding her to set her free, then led the a.s.sa.s.sins silently from the room at a run.

Left alone, the lieutenant's wife did not cry out. For a long time she stood paralyzed with horror, then she crawled to her husband's side and cradled his head protectively in her lap. Numb with shock she covered his bleeding body with blankets and pressed her fingers against the terrible wounds through which his brains were already oozing. Gazing fearfully towards the bedroom door, she waited only for her husband's murderers to return and kill her, too.

In the next house the rebels disturbed the children of the French adjutant living there as they searched through the darkened rooms for him. Rising from their beds two young boys and a girl watched terrified at their mother's side as the intruders hacked off their father's head; but again in obedience to the party's orders the murdered officer's family were left unscathed. In the sleeping quarters of the noncommissioned officers too, another group of rebels, moving swiftly and silently without lights, achieved total surprise. The gray-haired sergeant whom Lieutenant Devraux had been on the point of reprimanding for yawning in the guardhouse earlier was snoring so loudly beneath his muslin mosquito net that the arrival of his a.s.sailants at his bedside didn't wake him. They struck savagely at his body through the fine gauze and the sleep-stunned man twisted and jerked dementedly in its toils like a fish trapped in a trawl net, before he died. They killed another sergeant close by before he woke, then scalped both men and disemboweled them before chopping the limbs from their lifeless bodies.

All four of these Frenchmen - the lieutenant, the adjutant and the two sergeants - died in the first few moments of the raid. The speed and stealth of the attackers gave their first victims no chance to save themselves, but gradually the growing noise of the carnage roused the other sleeping officers. Paul Devraux heard the distant screams of the dead adjutant's wife and children as he lay dozing on his bed, and at first they seemed to be part of his troubled dreams. Then the rush of bare feet in the corridor outside brought him fully awake. The footsteps stopped before his door, and although the man spoke in a low subdued whisper, the fearful voice of his own Tongkingese batman carried clearly through the flimsy woodwork.

"That is the room of Lieutenant Devraux!"

He heard the doork.n.o.b squeak as an unknown hand tested the lock; then a m.u.f.fled Annamese curse followed. s.n.a.t.c.hing up his revolver from the night table, Paul pressed himself against the wall beside the door and waited.

Outside, Ngo Van Loc motioned his sons and two other rebels to retreat to the end of the corridor, then tugged one of the homemade cement grenades from the pouch at his waist. Activating its rudimentary friction igniter with his teeth, he rolled it against the door and ran to take cover beside his sons. The grenade exploded in a flash of flame and smoke, but although it splintered the lower panels, it lacked the force to breach the barricaded doorway. When he saw how little damage it caused, Ngo Van Loc cursed softly again and ordered his sons and the other two rebels to stand guard by the door while he fetched a machine gun from the caserne.

Inside the room Paul rose shakily to his feet, coughing and retching from the effects of the grenade's acrid fumes. He had flung himself flat the moment he heart it roll against the door, and although he could see that his barricade had withstood the blast, he quickly manhandled his chest of drawers into position to strengthen it further. A minute or two later he heard the sc.r.a.pe of a machine gun's tripod on the concrete floor of the corridor and ran to crouch in the corner farthest from the door. Its woodwork cracked and splintered under the impact of the bullets when the heavy caliber weapon opened up outside, but to his relief, after several sustained bursts the makes.h.i.+ft barrier still held firm.

While the rebels under Ngo Van Loc were attacking the officers and NCOs in their quarters, Limpid Stream raced up the hill to the fort with the main body of his men. The corporals in league with him opened the gates from inside as planned, and when their bugler sounded the "Generale" the French sergeant in charge of the armory, a.s.suming one of his officers bad given the order, rushed to unlock the gun racks. The two hundred and fifty men of the Seventh Company immediately grabbed their weapons and rushed into the courtyard. When their captain tried to rally them to resist the invaders, they shot him dead and swarmed down the hill to the caserne. There the Fifth and Sixth Companies had already been armed in response to the "Generale," and mutineers won over earlier by Limpid Stream flung open the doors to welcome the rebels and their fellow tirailleurs from the fort. In a mood of wild elation the Tongkingese troops and the rebels sang and danced together, firing their rifles aimlessly into the night sky. Some of them began racing through the streets of the town distributing leaflets brought from Hanoi and chanting the printed slogans aloud in unison. "All the French are ma.s.sacred!" they proclaimed. "The uprising is general in Indochina! People of Yen Bay take part! Join in!"

Through the single small window high in the wall above his bed which he'd boarded up with his night table, Paul heard these distant shouts mingling with the jubilation of the mutineers, and his heart sank. The occasional m.u.f.fled explosion of a grenade and the intermittent drum of machine gun lire from inside other buildings close by had convinced him that other French officers were trapped helplessly inside their rooms, too. The gun trained on his own door had stopped firing suddenly in the middle of a long burst a few minutes earlier, and he guessed it must at last have jammed. But the muted whispers still audible through the door told him that his attackers hadn't gone away.

In the corridor, Ngo Van Loc gave up trying to free the twisted cartridge belt and threw the useless weapons aside with a curse. He was squatting on his haunches staring helplessly at the unyielding barricade of the room when Limpid Stream appeared white-faced at the end of the corridor.

"Son Thuy, come quickly," he called. "I need your help! The tirailleurs of the Eighth have remained loyal in the fort. We must gather the men for an attack. Leave guards on these rooms."

Loc motioned to his two sons to remain by the door then dashed away with the other two rebels to join Limpid Stream. Behind his barricade Paul felt his spirits revive a little. He had heard enough of what Limpid Stream had said to give him a shred of hope. The men of his own Eighth Company had not joined the other mutineers! There was at least some small prospect of a counterattack from the fort now. Standing motionless in the middle of the darkened room, he strained his ears to interpret the confused sounds reaching him from the night outside-and prayed.

It took Limpid Stream and Ngo Van Loc a long time to organize the first a.s.sault; the exultant faces of the mutinous tirailleurs fell in dismay when they were told two hundred of their brothers had decided to stand by their French officers in the fort. Running away to turn their weapons over to rebels from Hanoi was one thing; attacking back up the hill in the dark against their own comrades- in-arms of the Eighth commanded by the chef de bataillon was quite a different matter. Because of the reluctance of the tirailleurs, the first a.s.sault was ragged and confused. Although they used a few machine guns, the uncertain leaders.h.i.+p of Limpid Stream did not inspire the tirailleurs and they were eventually beaten back. During the next half hour Limpid Stream led a.s.sault parties up the hillside again and again - but always they were easily repulsed.

Inside the fort the French chef de bataillon slowly recovered his nerve. He had been deeply shocked by how close he had come to death at the hands of his own forces when the mutiny began, but the success of his officers in throwing back the new rebel raids convinced him that he could stand fast within the citadel until daylight. His confidence grew when a native messenger found his way up the hillside through the fighting to report that the French civilians in the town were all safe. The Resident de France had managed to gather them together into a blockhouse of the Garde Indigene, which had remained loyal to a man. As the night wore on a trickle of tirailleurs from the three companies which had mutinied began to trickle back to the gates of the fort, beginning to be readmitted and offering their unopened ammunition pouches as evidence of their innocence. One of the officers who had barricaded himself in his quarters escaped up the hill at about two o'clock in the morning and the French commandant was sufficiently emboldened to send out a small patrol to seek other survivors.

In the caserne Limpid Stream slumped exhausted on a bench weeping with frustration at his inability to complete his conquest. Ngo Van Loc stood indecisively beside him listening to the sounds of sporadic firing coming from outside. Some of the rebels were still leading groups of tirailleurs up the hill against the fort, but Ngo Van Loc realized suddenly that although there were still several hours of darkness remaining, the revolt was now doomed to fail. He glanced down once more at Limpid Stream, who sat with his head buried in his hands, oblivious to what was going on around him, then turned and raced back towards the officers' quarters.

His two sons were still standing guard outside Paul Devraux's room, clutching their bloodstained weapons. The walls and door were pitted and scarred with bullet holes, but the barricade still denied them entry. In a fit of anger Loc kicked the jammed machine gun across the floor, and as he did so he saw the frightened face of the French officer's batman peer out of the kitchen door a few yards away to see what was making the noise. Loc stared at the little Tongkingese for a moment, then drawing his saber from the red sash at his waist, he beckoned the frightened man towards him.

Two minutes later Paul was startled to hear a gentle knocking on his shattered door. "It is safe to come out now, Monsieur Paul," called Ngo Van Loc in French. "The men who were here have all gone."

The French officer, half-recognizing the voice, stiffened. "Who is that?"

"Do you remember me? - Loc? Your father's 'boy' from the hunting camp. I can help you reach the fort now. Most of the other officers are safely gathered there. The men of your own Eighth Company have remained loyal to the chef de bataillon."

Paul's face registered his mystification. He recognized the hunting camp boy's voice despite a lapse of five years since he had last seen him but his presence at the fort aroused his suspicions. "What are you doing here, Loc? Are you with the rebels?"

There was a long pause outside. "Yes, I am, Monsieur Paul," he said a.s.suming a shamefaced tone. "But once you were a good friend to my sons and me. When I realized you were an officer here, I knew I must help you. I can make sure you get safe conduct to the fort gates." He paused and his voice took on a wheedling note. "Our rebellion has failed, Monsieur Paul. Perhaps if I help you now, you will be able to help me later "How do I know I can trust you?" asked the Frenchman suspiciously.

"Your batman is here with me. He will tell you." Loc tightened his grip around the man's puny shoulders and pressed his saber closer against his throat.

"Yes, yes, mon lieutenant, it's true," said the batman in a strangled whisper. "It's quite safe to come out flow. All the others have gone!"

Paul buckled on his sword belt and took his revolver in his right hand before beginning to dismantle the barricade. The combined a.s.sault of the cement grenade and the heavy-caliber machine gun bullets had split and shredded the furniture, and as he moved the damaged wardrobe aside, the woodwork of the door itself collapsed inwards. It was then that he caught sight of his little batman, staring bulging-eyed at him from across the corridor. With one band Ngo Van Loc was covering his mouth and with the other he pressed his bloodied saber against the terrified man's neck. The former hunting camp boy was holding the Tongkinese in front of him so that the frail body covered his own, and although Paul raised his revolver instinctively to fire the moment he saw he had been tricked, the risk of killing his batman made his finger hesitate on the trigger.

In the same instant Dong lunged fromhihinipfe1sjdc the door and struck at the Frenchman's arm with his saber, shearing away part of his sleeve and knocking the- revolver from his hand. His young brother, Hoc, appeared simultaneously from the other side of the door, swinging his coupe-coupe, and although the French officer twisted and ducked away from the blow aimed at his head, the coupe-coupe bit into the hump of his shoulder muscle and he staggered backwards into the room. He started to draw his sword but the two young Annamese pressed towards him, knocking it from his grasp, and together they forced him down onto his bed. They were lifting their weapons again, preparing to strike at his defenseless head, when Ngo Van Loc pushed between them, his features contorted with hate.

"Wait! Hold him for me. I will kill the son of Jacques Devraux myself!"

The two boys fell on the French officer and pinioned his arms. Paul's face was white with shock and blood from the wounds in his wrist and shoulder was already soaking through his uniform tunic. "Why, Loc, why?" he whispered, staring at them in horror. "Why kill someone who has been your friend?"

The Annamese lifted his saber and pressed its point against the base of the officer's throat. "Your father killed my wife!"

"Killed your wife?" Paul echoed the words of the Annamese in a horrified whisper. "That's not true!"

"He had her taken to jail in Saigon - his torturers murdered her." The Annamese drew the point of his saber sharply across the Frenchman's exposed chest, and a thin weal of new blood appeared.

"Loc, listen to me," said Paul desperately, trying to rise. "My father told me he found missing papers in your wife's quarters. The gendarmes had to question her. He left for a new post in Hanoi the next day. We had no idea Mai had died "Lies will not save your life!" Loc jabbed him viciously once more with the point of his saber. "Mai is dead murdered by France and you're going to die for this crime! A revolution of blood and iron has begun!"

Paul turned from the hate-filled face of the father to look at Loc's two sons, who were pressing his shoulders against the bed. The blood of their earlier victims was drying on their clothing and the eyes that he remembered sparkling mischievously as he taught them to imitate the calls of jungle birds with blades of gra.s.s gazed back at him from their gaunt faces with the same expression of ferocious loathing.

"Hoc, Dong, please listen to me," Paul began, speaking quietly in Annamese, "you don't understand "Hold your tongue!" Loc's voice rose in a shout, and his features twisted into a snarl. Standing up to his full height he lifted his saber to swing it at the French officer's head.

Paul struggled frantically in the grip of the two young Annamese but his wounds were sapping his strength and he could only watch helplessly as Loc's saber began to descend. Because his eyes were fixed on the blade, he didn't see the French sergeant from the fort appear in the doorway leading two loyal tirailleurs of his Eighth Company; he only heard the flurry of shots from a revolver and at his side he felt Hoc shudder as a bullet struck him.

Then the tiny room was filled suddenly with stumbling, frantic bodies; the two tirailleurs lunged at Loc and Dong with their bayonets while the sergeant reloaded his revolver, but the two Annames fought with great ferocity and succeeded in breaking out into the corridor. The sergeant fired after them as the' fled, but both father and son made their escape from the building through a shattered window and disappeared into the confused melee on the darkened hill outside. Young Hoc struggled to his feet and tried to follow, but the wound in his shoulder had left him dazed with shock, and the French sergeant, on his return to the room, took one look at the bloodied uniform of his now unconscious lieutenant then knocked the Annamese boy to the floor. Although Hoc was already moaning with pain, the sergeant's face showed no sign of pity, and after staring down at him for a moment or two with hate-filled eyes, he began kicking him savagely about the head and body.

12.

Rivulets of sweat trickled slowly down the face of Ngo Van Hoc as he crouched on the floor of his unlit cell in the Garde Indigene jail at Yen Bay with his hands covering his ears. it was four o'clock in the morning of June 57, 1930, and the fetid, stagnant air was heavy with the reek of putrefying foliage. It had been one of the hottest, most humid nights of the year in the Tongkingese fort town, but it was not just the suffocating heat that was making Hoc sweat; the agony of an uncontrollable fear was bathing the whole of his seventeen-year-old body in perspiration.

He pressed his hands more tightly against his ears in an effort to blot out completely the ringing knock of hammers coming from the field outside; he had hauled himself up to the barred window to peer out into the darkness when the noise first began, and it was the sight of the gang of coolies working in the center of the field by the light of the hurricane lamps that had filled him with dread. The tall, twin-pillared structure of wood and steel they were erecting was only partly visible in the light of the lamps, but it confirmed beyond any doubt the apprehension that had first seized him the previous evening when he and twelve other Quoc Dan Dang prisoners were taken from the Hanoi cells where they had spent the past four months and put on a heavily guarded train.

They were not told their destination, but when the clanking, five-hour journey up the Red River valley ended just after midnight on the platform at Yen Bay, the silent prisoners had begun to suspect the truth.

When the hammering finally stopped, Hoc uncovered his ears and stood up. For a minute or two he paced back and forth across the cell, ma.s.saging the spot just below his right shoulder where the bullet had struck home on the night of the mutiny; the wound had healed satisfactorily but it still ached if he allowed himself to get into a cramped position. From time to time he stopped moving to listen, but only the incessant shrill of cicadas in the trees bordering the field and the occasional croak of a toad broke the silence of the night.

He lay down on the plank bed and tried to sleep, but soon another commotion made him spring up to the window again. By the light of their torches he watched more coolies maneuver a heavily laden ox cart into the prison courtyard; they made no attempt to unload it quietly but flung what looked like long packing cases carelessly onto the flagstones. He didn't realize that they were cheap wooden coffins until they were all laid side by side in a neat row with their lids open. Then he counted them slowly and his heart lurched sickeningly in his chest - there were thirteen!

He released his grip on the bars of the window with a little moan of anguish and sank hack into a crouch on the stone floor. He remained there for the rest of the night, hugging his frail body with his own thin arms, and just before dawn a fitful sleep brought his exhausted mind and body a few moments of ease. In dream he imagined himself back in the cold dark isolation cell at An Dap, condemned again to solitary confinement for trying to escape from the plantation. But despite the heavy leg-irons and the fever which shook his body, he felt exhilarated. He wasn't going to die after all! Soon he and Dong would be together again in the leaking hut, pressed close in the darkness, helping one another to endure the daily hards.h.i.+p of plantation life. Even the rough stone walls of the An Dap cell, which he could feel but not see, seemed friendly and familiar, and although his feet were swollen from the beating he had received, he had no bullet wound. He pressed his shoulder hard with one hand; see, there was no pain! All that had been a terrible nightmare. Only one thing was not familiar in the blackness of the An Dap cell - the m.u.f.fled, rhythmic whisper of noise coming from outside. It seemed to be growing louder, drawing closer to him in the darkness, and his fear returned with a rush; he didn't know what the new sound was, but he was certain it was menacing to him.

He awoke trembling, to find the intensity of the darkness in his cell lessening. Then he noticed the new sound hadn't ceased with his dream. Wide-eyed with terror he listened to the m.u.f.fled beat of a thousand bare feet scuffing through the damp gra.s.s outside the jail. Two companies of the Second Battalion of the Fourth Regiment of the Tirailleurs Tonkinois were marching down from the fort -- the very men that Limpid Stream and the other Quoc Dan Dang rebels had hoped would help them begin a nationwide rebellion were marching and a.s.sembling obediently under their French officers to stand guard around the execution ground! He lifted himself to the window again and in the half-light caught a glimpse of them; with their rifles on their shoulders, their cone- shaped hats squarely on their heads, their legs wrapped from knee to ankle with blue puttees, they were taking their places in silence, staring mutely towards the center of the field.

As the scuff of the tirailleurs' marching feet quietened, from along the prison corridor Hoc heard the sudden crisp echo of soled shoes and the clank of keys. A cell door creaked open and the murmur of formal, dispa.s.sionate French voices reached his ears. After a minute or two the feet moved on, another door was opened and the voices murmured again. As the footsteps drew slowly -nearer to him, Hoc rose from his bed and stood rigid with anxiety in the middle of his cell.

When the door finally opened it admitted the French Resident of Yen Bay, a thin bespectacled man with a straggling mustache. Without looking at Hoc, he raised a sheet 'f paper in front of his face and read from it in a dry, emotionless voice. "A presidential decree of June tenth has rejected all appeals for clemency. The sentence of the Criminal Commission of Inquiry will therefore now be carried out." The Resident waited impatiently while the Annamese interpreter translated the announcement, then turned quickly on his heel and left the cell. As Hoc stared after him the black-frocked figure of the Hanoi prison chaplain stepped smoothly forward to take the Resident's place. He murmured something that. Hoc did not hear, raising his eyebrows at the same time in an expression of inquiry. When the Annamese interpreter offered a translation in his own language, Hoc still did not understand what was being asked of him, but he nodded his head numbly, hoping by his compliance to win a reprieve or at least a few minutes' respite. After motioning him to kneel before him, the priest sprinkled holy water on the trembling boy's forehead and deposited a few grains of salt on his tongue while murmuring the incantations of baptism into the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Hoc continued to nod uncomprehendingly during the perfunctory absolution that followed, and when he'd finished the priest asked quietly if he had any last wish to be made known to his family. "If you wish to write a letter, I will try to see that it is delivered," he added gently.

Hoc had heard nothing of his father and brother since the moment he was taken captive. In Hanoi he had been tortured with electricity until he revealed the address of the tiny room where they had all lived together above a carpenter's workshop in the city's old craft quarter. But other prisoners had told him later that Dong and his father had avoided returning to that address and were still at liberty. He was deeply ashamed of his betrayal and, suspecting this was some new trick to trap him into helping capture them, he shook his head fiercely.

As the priest left a barber entered, and warders held Hoc in a seated position while the barber lathered and shaved the nape of his neck. Tears of hopelessness welled in Hoc's eyes as the barber finished his work, and if he saw the traditional gla.s.s of cognac offered to him, he gave no sign. Other men came to dress him in a loose white smock and afterwards manacled his wrists behind his back. With a length of rope they hobbled his ankles so that he could take only short steps, then they left him alone again. By a quarter to five all the preparations for the ma.s.s execution had been completed, and an unnatural hush descended over the jail.

Outside a small crowd of Tongkingese had gathered on rising ground overlooking the field of execution, and in their midst Hoc's father and his brother, Dong, stood watching, gray-faced with anxiety. Stripped to the waist and wearing the dark turban of the upper Tongking peasant as disguise, they carried hoes like many of the other men around them. From where they stood they had a clear view over the heads of two companies of native tirailleurs, and the sight of the tall, mainly African troops of the French Colonial Infantry and the kepis of the Foreign Legionnaires, drawn up in a tight ring of security around the guillotine itself, were a disquieting reminder of their own frantic dash for freedom after the failure of the Yen Bay revolt.

The French officers with their loyal Eighth Company had routed the rebels with ease when they emerged from the fort at dawn, and the Colonial Infantry and men of the Legion came swiftly up the Red River valley by train to cut off their retreat. Limpid Stream himself had been captured, and Ngo Van Loc and his son were among the few who escaped downriver to the crowded safety of Hanoi's old quarter. There they learned for the first time that the Quoc Dan Dang's national leader, Nguyen Thai Hoc, code-named "the Great Professor," had tried to postpone the uprising at the last moment but his messenger had failed to reach the Yen Bay rebels in time. Other halfhearted raids launched that night in the upper delta had fizzled, and scattered grenade attacks against public buildings in Hanoi the day after had also failed to make any impact. The wave of revulsion that swept through Indochina and France in the wake of the b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.sacre of the fort's officers, however, had brought down a terrible retribution on the Quoc Dan Dang. The National a.s.sembly in Paris rang daily with the name of Yen Bay, and many stern demands for retribution were made; the governor general of Indochina traveled to the fort for the funeral of the victims and made a ringing pledge of vengeance to their black-garbed widows at the graveside.

A few days later when "the Great Professor" launched a despairing attack against a post of the Garde Indigene in the lower delta, his own force of rebels became the victims of the first air attack to be launched in Indochina. Five wood and fabric Potez 35 biplanes of the French Armee de l'Air swooped on the village of Co Am, where they were hiding, and devastated the thatched houses with sixty twenty-two-pound bombs; when the rebels and the terrified peasants of the village lied from their burning houses, the pilots had strafed them indiscriminately with Lewis guns swivel- mounted on their c.o.c.kpits. Some two hundred men, women and children were killed, and the French Resident Superieur announced publicly next day in the newspapers: "We will bomb all villages like this without pity if they give shelter to the rebels."

"The Great Professor" himself was captured while fleeing towards the Chinese border, and after interrogating him and other party leaders, the Surete Generale arrested many hundreds of rank-and-file members. Eighty of them were condemned to death, and five hundred others were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment and forced labor. It was to put an emphatic and symbolic end to the Viet Nam Nationalist Party and its rebellion that the French colonists had decided to execute its top leaders and the Yen Bay rebels at the fort where their bloodiest revolt had failed.

The first prisoner to emerge into the pale light of that June dawn was a diminutive Annamese, and Ngo Van Loc and Dong craned their necks to catch a glimpse of his face as he reached the top of the long slope leading up from the jail. Handcuffed and dressed in a snowy-white smock, he was escorted by four tall black Madagascans of the Infanterie Coloniale who towered above him.

"It is 'Bui the Messenger,' "breathed Dong in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, and beside him his father nodded grimly.

In total silence the little group moved across the field, led by the quick-stepping figure of the French Resident. Beside the macabre scaffold a squat, broad-shouldered Annamite bourreau waited with folded arms. In front of him the giant African infantrymen halted and stepped smartly aside, isolating the prisoner for the first time. The bourreau, who had been carefully trained by a French executioner, immediately grasped his shoulder and pushed him violently against the bascule; the hinged plank tipped forward with a crash under the impact of the prisoner's body and he fell face-downward into the lunette. The bourreau quickly slammed the upper half of this wooden collar into place and positioned his three-sided s.h.i.+eld carefully so that it would protect him from any blood that spurted from the trunk of his victim's body.

In the deep silence that had fallen over the field the click of the sprung jaws in the crossbeam opening to release the blade was heard clearly by everyone watching on the hillside. The razor- sharp steel mounted in a wheeled, eighty-pound weight rushed noisily down its metal-lined channels and shuddered to rest at ground level, decapitating Bui the Messenger instantly without breaking its momentum. His severed head dropped neatly into the waiting bucket behind the scaffold, and two of the executioner's Annamese a.s.sistants hastily tipped the bleeding trunk of his body into the first of the waiting coffins.

Bui the Messenger died without a sound, without betraying any signs of fear, and on the hillside, women among the crowd began sobbing quietly. Ngo Van Loc closed his eyes for an instant to blot out the image of the grisly apparatus in the center of the field and put a trembling arm around Doug's shoulders; he knew that like himself his elder son must already be imagining how they would endure the sight of Hoc's neck trapped in the lunette.

Before the lid of Bui's coffin was secured the French Resident and his military escort were hastening toward the jail again, and as the sun brightened behind the eastern hills he scurried back and forth to the cells shepherding each successive prisoner to the scaffold with the brisk efficiency which he knew the French officials and journalists from Hanoi expected from a colonial administrator of his rank. Jacques Devraux was among the group watching from the balcony of the Garde Indigene barracks; one of three Surete inspectors who had volunteered to accompany the group of high officials led by the inspector of political affairs and the captain of gendarmeries, he glanced down at a list in his hand from time to time to name the prisoner they were watching or offer a few words of explanation. Nguyen the Pacifist.. . Ha the Laborious, Nguyen the Benefactor. . . Dao the Paltry. . . . One by one he ticked them off as the rebels marched straight-backed to the scaffold, their faces taut with the effort of mastering their fear. Beside his father on the balcony, Paul Devraux watched the grim procession in silence. He had already resumed light duties, but his right arm was still supported in a white sling and his pinched pale face continued to betray something of the toll his injuries had taken on him.

"From this distance, Paul, they all look like schoolboys, don't they?" The Surete inspector shook his head, musing to his son as the short quick-striding figure of Limpid Stream appeared at the top of the slope leading from the jail. "Perhaps we're lucky that they apply the romantic notions of boys at play to organizing a rebellion. Otherwise it might not have been so easy to defeat them."

"I'm not so sure there isn't something more ominous in their makeup," replied Paul quietly. "They seem to have an unshakable faith in their destiny. It doesn't matter how wild the scheme, how great the odds stacked against them - they still throw themselves in headlong without a second thought."

"But doesn't that only prove that they're foolish people?" The older man raised a cynical eyebrow at his son.

"Not foolish - fanatical," replied the young lieutenant evenly. "A much more dangerous quality."

His father shrugged and looked away without replying. For a moment Paul studied his profile; he fancied the lines of age in his father's face were suddenly more p.r.o.nounced, and there seemed to be a new hardness about his mouth and eyes. "Did you ever find out, Father, how Loc's wife came to die in prison?" he asked quietly.

The older man shook his head without looking at him. "You know I'd left for Hanoi before it happened. I tried to make some inquiries from there. 'The death certificate said 'natural causes - heart.' That's all the information Saigon had."

"Could that be true?"

His father still didn't turn to face him. "There's no reason why we shouldn't believe the official explanation, is there? Prison cells are not healthy places. People do occasionally die in them."

"Yes, but Loc's wife -"The lieutenant broke off suddenly as the eerie silence in which all the executions had been taking place until then was shattered by a flurry of Annamese shouts from the center of the field.

"Cho toi noi! Cho toi noi!"

They looked up to find Limpid Stream struggling before the scaffold in the grip of one of the legionnaires, who had clamped a hand over his mouth when he began yelling in his own language: "I demand to speak!" The legionnaire managed to hold him silent while the Annamese burreau forced him down into the lunette, but as soon as he was released the Tongkingese teacher opened his mouth and began shouting at the top of his voice: "Viet Nam! Viet Nam! Viet Nam!"

The rallying cry of the Vietnamese Nationalist Party rang electrifyingly across the hushed field, and as he heard the click above his head signal the blade's release, the leader of the Yen Bay revolt yelled even louder to drown the noise of its descent.