Saigon (59 page)

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

“Why’s that?” 

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

“Is that why you’re so set on cultivating my friendship, Guy?” She smiled faintly as she spoke to take the sting out of the remark. “Do you hope I at least will tell it the way your embassy wants it told?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There’s no need to worry,” she whispered. “I’d already worked that out for myself.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“If you have reliable evidence to support that contention, I’d be glad to pass it to the U.S. ambassador immediately. Meanwhile we’ve got to assume the problems are unrelated. The ambassador’s already told your brother, I believe, how concerned Washington is that the Buddhist trouble might destabilize your country to such an extent that the military effort is undermined. At the end of that road, American troops here could be endangered.” 

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

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

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

“Look at these! The American photographers must have bribed that monk to barbecue himself for their cameras.” She flung the papers violently on the desk in front of her husband. “It could only have been a Communist-inspired plot!” While Nhu leafed quickly through the newspapers, his wife glared furiously over his head at Guy, and he noticed then that her costume differed from the traditional ao dai in one respect: instead of a high collar that fitted demurely under chin, it had been designed with a scooped décolleté neckline that drew added attention to her full breasts, and her expression showed that she was fully conscious of the impact of her provocative appearance. “Or perhaps, Monsieur Sherman,” she said in the same angry tone “the CIA itself is plotting to provoke a coup) d’état through the Buddhists.” 

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

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

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

“Americans are certainly simple in one respect,” said Guy calmly. “We know what we stand for — we don’t shift our ground easily. Here we support whatever helps the war effort - and whatever interferes with it, we oppose. We’re not in business to see wars lost to Communism.” 

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

“By alienating the Buddhists aren’t you effectively turning the whole country against you? Wouldn’t it be easier, as our ambassador has suggested to your brother-in-law, to admit the Hue shootings were not ordered from Saigon — and offer the victims some compensation?” 

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

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

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

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

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