Saigon (74 page)

Without meaning to, he found himself retracing his steps southward along the tree-lined streets that led to the Nam Giao, where so long ago he had watched the Sacrifice to Heaven with Lan; but he found that its high walls were overgrown with grass and weeds and parts of them had already crumbled. The ancient ceremonial edifice in the semi-darkness seemed unremarkable and lacking in charm, and he wandered aimlessly around the surrounding streets for a while. He began to feel despondent, and this mood deepened when he discovered he was unable to get a taxi in that part of Hue. At last he set off to walk all the way back to the ramshackle Gia Hoi brothel to keep his midnight appointment with the daughter who was not only a stranger to him but who had also been an avowed enemy of his country for the past fourteen years. 

“Why have you come here?” 

The sudden sound of the voice from behind him startled Joseph. He swung around but could make out no more than a shadowy outline of a slender woman dressed in black trousers and tunic. She had spoken in English, but her voice was filled with unconcealed hostility. 

“Is that you, Tuyet?” He stepped eagerly into the deep shadow beneath the overhead walkway of the old rice depot, but she retreated a pace from him. 

“Tell me why you’ve come!” 

As his eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom, he was able to —make out the shape of her face, and his breath caught in his throat. “Tuyet, I came to warn you! You must go away from her. Security agents are going to arrest you at dawn!” He stepped towards her again and stretched out his hands as if to take her by the shoulders. 

“Please don’t touch me!” She didn’t move this time, but the coldness of her voice was sufficient to halt him in mid-stride, and they stood face to face, looking at one another with only the occasional splutter of the dying firecrackers of Tet punctuating the tense silence between them. 

He had almost given up all hope of seeing her. The former rice depot had been locked and deserted at midnight; even the old crone had gone. He had waited and wandered irresolutely through the sordid neighborhood, losing all track to time, returning again and again to the corner outside the depot although he no longer had any real expectation of finding her there. It had been just before three A.M. when he returned for the last time, and after the long day of anxiety, her appearance in the shadows behind him had come as a shock. 

“You’ve only got two hours, perhaps three,” said Joseph desperately. “Let me help you to get to Saigon. We can take the first plane in the morning. I’ll hide you until I find a way of getting you out of the country.” 

The sudden sound of her laughter from the darkness startled him. “Your security agents have chosen a very bad time to come and arrest me. It’s not me who’s in danger anymore, it’s them — and you!” 

Joseph moved closer, trying to read her expression in the gloom. “What do you mean?” 

He saw her lift her wrist close in front of her face to check the luminous dial of the cheap watch she wore. “You and your Saigon friends have less than fifteen minutes to make your escape. After that Hue will fall into the hands of the people.” 

He stared at her in disbelief. “You mean the Communists are going to try to take the city?” 

In the gloom he saw the flash of her teeth as she smiled “Not just this city but a hundred cities of the South are about to be seized — including Saigon. Some attacks have already begun. Your puppet president, Thieu, and Air Marshal Ky will be assassinated, the radio stations will be taken over — a great general uprising of all the people of the South is getting under way.” 

“You can’t be serious, Tuyet!” 

She shrugged. “Perhaps you’ll believe me when the representatives of the people come to the Imperial Hotel to arrest you. While you idled over your dinner there tonight, ten of our battalions were closing in all around the city.” 

“How did you know where I’m staying?” 

“The girl in the CORDS office is one of us. Your name was added to the list of wanted Americans just after nine o’clock tonight.” 

Joseph stared at his daughter, aghast. “But, Tuyet, how can an attack like that succeed in Hue? There’s a whole division of government troops quartered in the Citadel, and the U.S. Marines have three or four battalions standing by at Phu Bai — they could be here within minutes.” 

“At least half of the First Division are on leave for Tet, and most of the others are drunk and bloated with overeating!” Her voice was icy with contempt, and even in the half-darkness he saw her features twist with distaste as she waved her hand towards the old rice depot. “We’ve been planning this offensive for six months. I came to this awful place a year ago to organize an espionage center. With only twenty girls I’ve learned all that’s worth knowing about the puppet troops and their commanders — and all the American military forces in the Hue region too. Now do you understand why it would’ve been better if you hadn’t come?” 

Joseph considered her words in silence, and when he spoke there was a catch in his voice. “Even now I don’t regret coming, Tuyet. It’s fourteen years since I saw you — but I’ve thought of you every day. Did you think I’d just forgotten you?” 

“We’ve always lived in different worlds,” she said fiercely. “You’re no more important to me than the thousands of other overfed American aggressors who’ve trampled all over my country for so long.” 

Joseph stepped towards her and grasped her by the shoulders before she could move away. “I’m your father, Tuyet! And I’ve never given up hope that one day I would find you again.” 

She struggled to free herself, but he tightened his grip, and their faces came close together in the darkness. Suddenly, a brilliant flash of garish light illuminated the night sky above the Citadel and he saw her face clearly for the first time; the almond eyes, the high cheeks and the full, wide mouth were revealed to him as though through the lens of a camera for a fleeting, subliminal moment and her natural beauty was heightened and exaggerated by the glare. She looked startled and unsure of herself, and in the inky blackness that enveloped them in the wake of the flash, he felt her body relax suddenly in his grasp. 

“Leave me alone and get away from here,” she said in a low voice. “If you stay, they’ll kill you when they come.” 

A flurry of explosions louder than any firecracker rent the night to the west and Joseph turned his head quickly in their direction. He listened for a moment, identifying the shriek of artillery rounds as well as rockets and mortar fire. By the time he turned back to her, the flashes of exploding shells were becoming continuous, and they were both able to see each other clearly by their glow. 

“For fourteen years I’ve dreamed of this moment, Tuyet,” said Joseph quietly. “I’m not going to cut and run now — for anything or anybody.” 

Without warning he crushed her roughly against his chest and closed his eyes, abandoning himself to the surge of emotion that swept through him. For the briefest instant she clung to him in her turn, then she broke free and pushed him away. “Why don’t you go? Do you want them to find me with you and kill me too? Do you want them to believe I’m a traitor?” 

Joseph’s hands fell limp at his sides and he looked at her uncertainly. “I can’t turn my back on you, Tuyet. I can’t leave you again just like that He stopped in mid-sentence, distracted suddenly by a movement in the street behind her that led down to the river. 

Sensing his alarm she turned to follow his gaze and saw the silhouetted figures of a dozen or more troops running rapidly in their direction. They hugged the shadows the shadows of the ramshackle huts as they came, but the light from the flames and the growing barrage being poured onto the city was bright enough by then for Joseph to recognize the distinctive flat helmets and square back-packs that the soldiers wore. 

“They look like North Vietnamese troops,” gasped Joseph. 

“Yes — they’re the vanguard of 804 Battalion of the People’s Army,” whispered Tuyet. “They’ve just crossed the river in inflatable boats.” 

Joseph tried to push Tuyet deeper into the shadows beneath the walkway, but the flares and artillery flashes that made the advancing troops visible to them were illuminating the whole street, and the attackers caught sight of them before they could take cover. The front rank immediately stopped and opened fire, and the long volley of shots splintered the crumbling wooden wall of the rice depot all around them. Joseph felt a sudden burning pain in his chest and he clutched at it with both hands as he sank to his knees. Almost immediately his fingers became sticky with blood and he stared up at Tuyet in astonishment. 

For a moment she stood rooted to the spot, then she seized his arm and pulled him to his feet. Seeing the movement, the North Vietnamese troops began firing again, and more bullets thudded into the rotting wood above their heads. The troops began running faster as they drew near, and after glancing frantically over her shoulder, Tuyet dragged Joseph around the corner of the rice depot and hustled him across the street into the darkness of a narrow alley that led away through the heart of the shanty district towards the wharves of the River of Perfumes. 

In his office on the fifth floor of the United States Embassy in Saigon, Guy Sherman was at that moment reading at his desk. He was CIA duty officer for the night and from time to time he lifted his head from the report he was scrutinizing to listen to the noise of the exploding firecrackers in the street outside. As the evening had worn on, the frequency of the explosions had gradually lessened and he was looking forward to the time when they would cease altogether. After a particularly loud detonation, he got up and went to the window to peer out across the rooftops, but he couldn’t see much because the masonry rocket screen outside restricted his view. 

Not for the first time he found himself patting the .38 automatic pistol he wore in a holster under his left armpit. Whether he did it for reassurance or to check that it was still there he wasn’t sure, but he was already well aware that he wasn’t the only man in the embassy that night whose nerves were being affected by the Tet firecrackers. Every time he had made his rounds, he’d noticed that the Marine guards in the front lobby and on the roof were tense and on edge. They were trying to disguise their unease by making wisecracks and pretending to go for their guns whenever particularly loud reports were heard, but it had been obvious that their humor was only a cover for the real disquiet they felt; they had heard reports of the widespread truce violations that had begun earlier in the day, and the continuing noise of the Tet celebrations in the streets was making it impossible for them to detect whether any new fighting was breaking out around Saigon. He’d tried to reassure them that all seemed peaceful as far as he could see, but he knew that this hadn’t helped them much. When quiet at last returned, Guy left the window and sat down again to resume his inspection of a long report that had just come in from a newly recruited agent in the delta. It was poorly written and confused in content, and he had to concentrate hard in an effort to make anything of it; as a result the noise of the firecrackers faded gradually from his consciousness and soon he was scarcely aware of them at all. 

As he settled to his task, inside a locked motor repair workshop on Phan Thanh Gian, half a mile west of the embassy, a tense group of twenty specially trained suicide commandos of the People’s Liberation Armed Forces C-10 Battalion were gathered around a little one-ton Peugeot truck. On the oil-spattered concrete floor at their feet lay large baskets of rice and tomatoes inside which were concealed the disassembled parts of rocket launchers, antitank bazookas, machine guns, hand grenades, plastic explosives and thousands of rounds of ammunition; but for the moment the guerrillas were ignoring their weapons and giving all their attention to the political commissar, who was reading from a single sheet of typescript by the light of an unshaded bulb that hung from the cob-webbed ceiling. Because the flimsy walls and sack-covered windows would have betrayed any loud noise to the street outside, he spoke in a fierce whisper, emphasizing his words with exaggerated facial expressions. 

“‘Move forward to achieve final victory! — those are the words of Chairman Ho addressed from Hanoi to all cadres and combatants taking part in this historic general offensive. They are both a greeting for Tet and a combat order for our entire army and the whole population!” 

The faces of the listening guerrillas were already taut with tension at the thought of the attack they were about to make; clad in loose shirts and trousers of black calico that to Western eyes resembled pajamas, they had put on red neckerchiefs and armbands to identify themselves when they were at close quarters with their enemy inside the walled compound of the U.S. Embassy. The youngest among them, Ngo Van Kiet, grandson of Jacques Devraux’s one-time hunting camp “boy,” licked his lips nervously and clenched his fists unseen at. his sides to steady the fluttering sensation he felt in the pit of his stomach; at seventeen, he still had the round, hairless cheeks and innocent eyes of a child and when they wanted to tease him, his comrades still called him “Little Slug” as his dead father, Ngo Van Dong, had done when he was an infant. While listening to the commissar’s voice Kiet scowled in the manner of the older men to disguise his extreme youth, and fingered the sash of red and gold silk that he had tied around his waist beneath his shirt. The sash was one of the old battle banderoles his father had worn when he stormed into the French citadel at Yen Bay in 1930 alongside his grandfather, and it had been given to him when he was first made a member of the National Liberation Front’s junior messenger corps at Moc Linh. Although he was immensely proud of the banderole, he had always been careful to obey his father’s strict exhortation to keep it hidden beneath his clothes, since Communist Party dogmatists in the 1960s did not consider the past activities of old Quoc Dan Dang nationalists worthy of inclusion in the history of the Vietnamese revolution. 

“In compliance with the attack order of the Presidium of the Liberation Front’s Central Committee,” said the commissar, reading slowly from the paper, “all cadres and combatants of the Liberation Armed Forces should now move Forward to carry out direct attacks on the headquarters of the enemy. Our aim is to disrupt the American imperialists’ will for aggression and to smash the puppet government and puppet army who are the lackeys of the United States. Our aim is also to restore power to the people, to liberate completely the fourteen million people of South Vietnam and fulfill out revolutionary task of establishing democracy throughout the country!” 

The commissar raised his head and gazed round with glittering eyes at the faces of his twenty commandos. “The Tet General Offensive of 1968 will be the greatest battle ever fought throughout the long history of our country, comrades! It will bring forth worldwide change but will also require many sacrifices. It will decide the fate and survival of our Fatherland and will shake the world. . . . Our country has a history of four thousand years of fighting and defeating foreign aggression, particularly glorious battles such as Bach Dang, Chi Lang, Don Da and Die Bien Phu. We defeated the so-called special war of the Americans and we are defeating their so-called limited war. Now we will move resolutely forward to defeat the American aggressors completely in order to restore independence and liberty in our Country!” 

The guerrillas gazed raptly at the commissar, visibly moved by the grandeur of his rhetoric; they knew he was a northerner who had fought through the First Indochina War against the French and had been wounded at Dien Bien Phu. Three fingers of his left hand were missing, and he walked with a pronounced limp from his wounds. They could see that he, too, was moved by the moment, and he made no effort to conceal the tears glistening in his eyes. 

“Dear comrades,” he continued, his voice breaking slightly, “the American aggressors know they are losing. The call for assault to achieve independence has sounded! The mighty mountains of the Annamite Chain and the great Mekong River are moving to lend us their great force! Tonight, comrades, you must act as heroes of Vietnam. You must act with the spirit and pride of true combatants of the Liberation Army! You must seize the American Embassy! Kill all its occupants! Repulse all efforts to reoccupy it! You must fight’ to your last drop of blood — and never surrender!” He lowered the paper and gazed around slowly at each of them in turn with burning eyes. “Final victory, comrades, shall be with us!” 

“Final victory shall be with us!” As one man, the twenty guerrillas repeated the final exhortation in a hoarse whisper, raising their clenched fists above their heads as they did so. The commissar stood looking around at them for a moment longer, then turned on his heel and walked quickly from the garage. 

Immediately young Kiet and the other nineteen men began scooping rice and tomatoes from the baskets to uncover the weapons and ammunition that had been smuggled into the heart of Saigon during the previous week. They loaded the munitions with great care onto the back of the Peugeot and climbed up to crouch beside them. Four of the guerrillas got into a battered little blue Renault taxi parked at the back of the garage, and Kiet ran to haul on the squeaking chains that raised the door leading into the street. As soon as the two vehicles moved outside, he scrambled aboard the truck and two minutes after the commissar finished reading out the battle order, they were chugging one behind the other without lights, through the near-deserted streets of Saigon towards their target.