War Baby (20 page)

An explosion . ..

... an explosion.

It sounded like a grenade.

Then another.

He heard the answering chatter of small-arms fire and then the inevitable screaming. What was happening? Had another
guinda
stumbled into the camp?

The sounds were coming from the northern perimeter; he saw a flare pop over the jungle, trailing green phosphorus towards a ragged fringe of palms. The soldiers’ sounded unnerved; like Salvador had said, they didn’t like night fighting. Buford was yelling orders in his execrable Spanish.

There was a sharp, short burst of automatic weapons fire, very close, right outside the door. Someone had taken out the guards.

Christ, they had come for
him
. He pulled at the rope that secured him to the cot, but the knots bit tighter into his wrist.

Another burst of gunfire and then the sound of boots running along the veranda.

Two figures stood silhouetted in the doorway. ‘
Gringo?
’ He recognized Salvador’s falsetto.

‘Over here!’

Salvador lumbered into the room, sawed through the rope with three slashes of the knife in his belt. He pulled Ryan to his feet and dragged him to the doorway. Bullets slapped into the adobe wall and they both threw themselves on the floor.

Shadows milled around in the darkness, more bullets smacked into the wall behind them. ‘We are one hundred yards from the perimeter,’ Salvador said in his ear. ‘Run very fast, but do not run straight.’

At that moment the moon disappeared behind the clouds.

‘Now!’

The Sheraton Hotel

Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Mickey stood in front of the bathroom mirror, a hotel towel wrapped around her body, her hair still damp from the shower. She surveyed the damage of fourteen months in El Salvador. Her face looked thinner than she remembered it and there were dark hollows in her cheeks. She wondered what Ryan had found so attractive.

Salvador and thirty
compas
had gone back for him, but she guessed it would be too late. Meanwhile, at Salvador’s insistence, Webb had been escorted across the border into Honduras. She had gone with him, ostensibly to ensure that he did not suffer a recurrence of the malaria, but in truth because she needed a rest. She was exhausted. She promised herself a few weeks in Tegucigalpa and then she would go back.

There was a knock at the door.

* * *

Ryan.

He looked very pale, and much thinner. A ghost. ‘Can I come in?’ he said.

She stood aside, gripping the towel. He stood in the middle of the room, in a filthy khaki shirt and camous, dried red mud tracked across the plush carpet from his jungle boots. His hair was lank and unwashed and he smelled of the jungle.

His arm was in a sling, but the bandages were filthy.

‘I thought you were dead,’ she said.

‘I thought so too.’

She touched him, as if satisfying herself that he was real. ‘You stink to high heaven,’ she said.

The glimmer of a smile. ‘I bet you say that to all the boys.’

‘Get your clothes off.’

‘That’s more like it.’ It sounded off, an actor with a badly rehearsed line.

‘You need a wash.’

She went into the bathroom and ran the shower. When she came back he was still there in the middle of the room, staring at the wall. She peeled the clothes off his body. They were almost rotted through. She led him into the bathroom. She dropped the towel on the tiles and climbed in beside him, helped to soap him down. ‘It was Hugh,’ she said.

He frowned, as if trying to remember the name.

‘He persuaded them to go back for you.’

‘Salvador told me. Good old Spider, ay?’

‘What happened?’

‘Oh, the usual shit.’

The dressings on his arm were rank. She unwrapped the bandages, dropped them on the floor of the shower stall. The professional in her assessed the damage: a T & T bullet wound on his upper arm, another surface laceration on the shoulder. The wounds were suppurating; they would need sterilizing, debriding.

She felt him sag against her. The weight of him was too much for her, and she eased herself down until they were sitting on the tiles. His face was grey. ‘Sean?’

‘Sorry.’

‘I’ll get you a doctor.’

‘I’m all right. Just a bit dizzy, that’s all. Had the runs the last couple of days.’

Probably dysentery, she thought. Plus blood loss, hunger, exhaustion. Unexpectedly he grinned, and the light came back on in his eyes. ‘You look great.’

‘I look like shit, Ryan.’

‘Not to me.’

‘Oh, no.’ She looked down. He was coming back to life. ‘You can’t, you idiot. You’ll go into shock. You need all that blood in your vital organs.’

‘That is my vital organ, Mickey.’

‘You’re out of your mind.’

‘I’ve got a proposition for you.’

‘Not now. Absolutely not. It’s for your own good.’

‘No, listen.’

‘You’re in no state to do anything but lie in a bed with a drip in your arm.’

He reached up and stroked her hair. ‘You’ve got the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen. They’re like looking into the ocean.’

‘You’re delirious.’

‘I want you to come back to the States with me.’

‘Don’t do this, Ryan.’

‘It’s Sean.’

She started to cry. She wept with relief; not just that he was alive, but that they were both alive, and because it was so good to have a warm human body next to hers again, and so good to feel safe. ‘But I never even liked you,’ she said.

‘I never even liked you either. See, we have more in common than we thought.’

Later he lay on the bed while she dressed the wounds on his shoulder. They were bleeding again. ‘We need to get you to a hospital,’ she said.

‘Just want to sleep,’ he mumbled.

‘You sleep. I’ll be back soon.’

She dressed quickly and slipped out, closing the door quietly behind her.

* * *

Ryan opened his eyes as soon as he heard the door close. He was tired, tired to the marrow of his bones, but he could not sleep. Every time he shut his eyes they came out of the shadows in the corners of the room, the murdered women and children of the plaza in La Esperanza, and Salvador’s two dozen good men, all of them clustered around his bedside.

And there, towering over them all, his hands on their shoulders, was the castrato, Salvador.

‘Two dozen good men,’ he said. ‘Two dozen good men for one life. Your life. For you,
gringo
! I hope it was worth it.’

He had never had nightmares before, not in fifteen years of reporting. It will pass, he thought. It will pass.

Besides, it will be different from now on. I’ve got my second chance and I have promises to keep. I have to make it worth it.

For Salvador. For the two dozen good men.

It will be different from now on. I had a deal with God. I gave him my word.

They arranged to meet in the coffee shop across the road from the hotel. She ordered coffee and waited. He arrived half an hour late, looking pleased with himself.

‘The film’s freighted out,’ he said, as he sat down. ‘I filed the story this morning from the hotel. It will be in all the nationals before we get back.’ He saw the look on her face. His excitement was replaced by resignation. ‘Ryan’s back.’

She nodded.

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s resting. In my room.’

He winced. She supposed she should be flattered, two men fighting over her, but she was just sad. She wondered if she had made the right choice.

‘I’ve booked a flight back to the States this evening,’ he said.

‘Do you want to see him before you leave?’

‘Not really.’

‘You saved his life.’

‘He would have done the same for me.’

‘You didn’t have to do it. You could have told the truth about the film.’

‘I admit it crossed my mind.’

She moved the dregs of her coffee with her spoon. ‘I’m sorry.’

He forced a smile. ‘I’ll get over it.’

‘I have to get him to a hospital.’

‘He’s in pain, then?’ Webb asked, hopefully.

‘Yes.’

‘Then the day hasn’t been a complete disaster.’

‘He’s asked me to come back to the States with him.’

He shook his head. ‘Be careful, Mickey.’

She nodded.

‘It’s better than going back with the
compas
. You wouldn’t have lasted another six months.’

‘What about me and Ryan? What’s your forecast there?’

‘About that long. But Ryan’s not fatal. At least I don’t think so.’ He threw an air ticket on the table. ‘It’s only as far as Miami. The agency has already paid for it. I’ll figure out how to claim for it later. You earned it, I guess.’

‘Come and see him before you leave.’

He shook his head. ‘Give him my best.’

‘Please.’

He held out his hand. ‘Take care. If you’re ever in New York, and you’re not with Ryan, look me up.’

‘You’re wrong about him.’

‘I don’t think so. I’ve known him a lot longer than you.’ He stood up, hesitated, leaned across the table. ‘I love you, Mickey,’ he said.

And he walked away.

Seventh Regiment Armoury

Most of the guests had left. Those that remained had drifted down to the Colonel’s Reception Room on the ground floor. It was a large somber room furnished in black walnut and oak, the atmosphere stale with tobacco smoke. It was dominated by a huge Rembrandt Peale oil portrait of Washington. George VI glared back at him in eternal enmity from the opposite wall, down the length of his aristocratic nose.

They stood by the marble fireplace, on Washington’s side of the room. Cochrane selected their drinks from a passing waiter. They all chose cognac except for Wendy Doyle, who wanted a Strega.

‘Back to the story,’ she said, turning back to Webb. ‘What did you do when you got back to New York?’

‘I’d had enough by then. No one cared about I cared about. You can show them war, famine, torture. People shake their heads and say ‘that’s sad’ and then turn to the funny pages.’

‘You quit IPA?’

‘The previous year I’d written a book about my experiences in Vietnam, and it had done quite well. My publishers wanted me to write another one. I decided to retire to Long Island, buy a pipe and one of those cardigans with leather patches on the elbows and become a famous author.’

‘So you’d already written Goodnight, Saigon by this stage,’ Doyle said.

‘I’d decided on a sequel. I wanted to tell the story of the Vietnamese refugees, in two parts. In the first half of the book I was going to interview refugees who had been trying to get out, in the second half I’d talk to some of the Vietnamese who were already here. The royalties I’d earned from Goodnight, Saigon and the advance for the sequel were just about enough to live on for a year, with a little left over for research expenses. And I planned to do some freelancing on the side.’

‘Did you keep in touch with Mickey?’

He shook his head. ‘I told myself that was a closed chapter. I knew what Ryan was doing, of course. He was a minor celebrity for a while, as you know. But he was a closed chapter, too, as far as I was concerned. I had a new direction in my life, and I just wanted to turn my back on the rest of it.’

‘Funny how life messes you around when you think you’ve finally made a break,’ Cochrane said. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Maybe it’s fate,’ Doyle said.

‘I don’t believe in fate,’ Webb told her. ‘I suspect, in some unconscious way, we make these things happen.’

Philippines and the United States, March 1983

‘You see these things, these terrible things. But in an odd way they’re good stories.’

- Charles Mohr, war correspondent

Vietnamese Refugee Camp Number U-5 Puerto Princesa, Philippines

A navy jeep had been sent to get him from the small airport and bring him to the Philippines Western Command Headquarters - WESCOM - a few miles up a dusty red-dirt road. Grandiose in name, WESCOM turned out to be just a few wooden bungalows and access roads shaded by drooping palms.

Commodore Sergio Garcia, WESCOM’s commander-in-chief, rose to greet him as he was escorted into his office. He was dressed in a crisp khaki uniform, a handsome man with a mane of thick black hair, flecked with silver, with black spectacles and a boyish grin.

‘Mr Hugh Webb? I am Commodore Garcia. We have been expecting you. Please take a seat.’

‘Commodore.’ They shook hands. ‘Thank you for arranging my visit.’

Webb looked around; a small, neat office, cooled by an electric fan. There was a map on the wall behind the commodore’s head that delineated his command: the Sulu Sea and the eastern reaches of the South China Sea including large areas of disputed but largely uninhabited reefs and islands.

‘We are always pleased to entertain gentlemen from the American press. Would you like refreshment?’

‘Something cold.’

Garcia turned to the aide who had shown him into the office and spoke quickly in Tagalog. He turned back to Webb, still smiling. ‘So, what can we do for you?’

‘Well, to clarify something, I’m not actually with the American press. I am engaged in writing a book.’

‘Ah, you are an author. That is very good.’ Garcia seemed impressed. He beamed even harder.

‘I was a journalist for many years and I spent several years in Vietnam. The book I am writing is about the Vietnamese experience of that war, during and after. Naturally a great part of that experience includes the so-called boat people.’

‘And you wish to talk to some of these people in our camp?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Of course. I believe you have already obtained a clearance from the government?’

Webb nodded, opened his briefcase and took out a letter signed by the Philippines Minister for Foreign Affairs. Garcia examined it briefly, then handed it back, still smiling. ‘You have been to other camps?’

‘I spent a few days in Hong Kong, and then Malaysia, at Pulau Bidong.’

Garcia stopped smiling. ‘You will find the conditions here a little better, I think. But then we have not had to deal with such large numbers.’

The aide returned with two glasses of Coca-Cola on a metal tray. He set them down on Garcia’s desk and left.

‘What is it you are looking for, Mr Webb?’

‘I find all the refugees have an extraordinary story to tell. I think I would like people in America simply to understand what they have gone through. We fought a war, supposedly on their behalf, but we never really understood them.’

Garcia considered for a moment. ‘If it is the extraordinary that you are looking for, there is one young girl you must talk to here. The truth of her survival is remarkable, truly remarkable. She should definitely be in your book.’ He stood up. ‘Come along, we will find her. You will require an interpreter?’

‘I have a little of the language from my time there. Since I began my research I have learned a little more. But I am by no means an expert.’

Garcia nodded. ‘Then we’ll bring Lieutenant Marquez with us. This way, please.’

* * *

The refugee camp was situated at the end of the airport runway, overlooking the sea. It was a flat, sandy wasteland, cordoned off with barbed wire, a handful of scrubby trees providing the only shade. A BAC-111 roared overhead, destined for Manila.

It looked well organized compared to some of the other camps he had seen. There appeared to be no overcrowding and the refugees were housed in wooden huts. Opposite the guard room, there was even a kiosk selling canned drinks and ice-cream and cigarettes. Compared to Pulau Bidong this was a resort.

Marquez crossed the compound, past a knot of youths playing volleyball on a hard dirt pitch. A young girl was drawing water from a hand pump. The lieutenant spoke to her, and the girl put down the bucket and followed him.

The child wore a ragged T-shirt with a decal of Mishka the Bear from the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and a pair of tattered bell-bottom jeans. She was as thin as a stick, and it made her brown eyes seem huge. Her skin had been burned almost black by the sun, and there were fresh scars on her arms and legs. Webb smiled at her, and she smiled nervously back.

‘Her name is Phuong,’ Garcia said.

Phuong. It was a common Vietnamese name for a girl, and he had heard it many times during the last few weeks. But every time he heard it, he thought:
I should have done more.

‘She was found on the McAdam Reef nearly seven hundred kilometres from the coast of Vietnam,’ Garcia said. ‘Some fishermen found her and brought her back to their village. When one of my patrol vessels called at their island a few weeks later they handed her on to us. She was brought back here to the navy hospital in a very poor condition.’

‘What happened to her arms and legs?’

‘When her boat hit the reef, she had to crawl across the coral to reach the island. The cuts have taken a long time to heal. When she was brought here, they were very badly infected.’

‘How long was she on the island?’

‘We estimate about four months.’

‘How did she survive for so long without food?’

‘We don’t know. We imagine she took shellfish and snails from the reef. She stored rainwater in plastic containers thrown up on the beach by the wreck. I suspect there is more to her story, but that is all she will tell us.’

Webb looked down at the girl. Her left hand was balled into a tight fist.

‘Is there something in her hand?’

Garcia spoke quickly to Marquez, then turned back to Webb. ‘Lieutenant Marquez says he doesn’t know. He thinks so but she will not show him and he has not the heart to make her.’

‘Perhaps there’s physical damage to her hand.’

Another quick exchange with the lieutenant.

‘The lieutenant doesn’t think so. He says the doctor examined her when she first arrived here, and that she became quite distressed when he tried to prise open her fingers. But he believes there is no injury. Do you wish Lieutenant Marquez to use force?’

Webb shook his head. ‘No. No, don’t do that.’ He crouched down and smiled at her. He wondered how old she was; he guessed somewhere between ten and twelve years.

‘
Con am com chua
?' he said in Vietnamese, the traditional greeting: Have you eaten?

‘
Da con an com roi, ba.
' Thank you, but I have already eaten, Uncle.

‘You would like to hear her story?’ Garcia asked.

Webb stared at the little girl, his face creased into a frown.

‘Mr Webb?’

Webb looked up, startled.

‘She can come back to my office. We will be more comfort-able there.’

‘Thank you. Yes. I’d like that.’

* * *

Marquez pulled up a straight-backed chair and indicated that Phuong should sit down. He gave her a glass of Coca-Cola, which she accepted wordlessly, gulping down the whole glass in one swallow.

Marquez brought up a chair and sat down beside her.

‘Tell her there is nothing to be afraid of,’ Garcia said, and Marquez translated. The girl remained inscrutable.

‘Can you ask her when and where she was born?’ Webb said.

The girl spoke slowly in her own language.

‘She says she was born in the Year of the Dog,’ Marquez said.

Webb calculated quickly. The previous year had also been the Year of the Dog, on the Chinese calendar, and the calendar had a twelve-year cycle. So the girl was a little older than he had anticipated, around thirteen.

‘Tell her I am a writer, a
bao chi
, from America. I would like the people in my country to know her story, and the story of the other Vietnamese people who were forced to flee her country. Tell her I would like to know what happened to her, so I can write it down.’

Marquez translated this.

The girl murmured something and Marquez interpreted. ‘She wants to know if you will take her with you to America.’

It was a question they all asked at some time. He felt Garcia watching him, curious as to how he would answer. ‘Tell her I cannot make such a promise. Tell her eventually she will be resettled in another country but her fate is quite out of my hands.’

She said something to Marquez.

‘She has asked me why she should help you, if you cannot help her.’

Webb was a little startled by this reply, but he said: ‘Tell her there is no reason.’

The little girl stared at him, as if deciding for herself whether he could be trusted. Finally she turned back to Marquez.

‘She asked me … if the American people realized what was happening in her country, would they try and stop it?’

‘Perhaps they will do more to help you and the other people in this camp,’ Webb said.

This seemed to satisfy her. She held out her glass for more Coca-Cola.

Webb explained to her about the voice recorded and put it on the table between them. Then he picked up his notepad and pen, and Phuong started to recite her story. ‘The first thing I remember,’ Marquez translated, ‘I was living with my mother in Cholon ...’

* * *

My mother was a very fine lady, very beautiful. Everyone loved her and respected her. She always wore very beautiful clothes, and she was very kind and gentle. My father was a big businessman with lots of money. We had a beautiful villa right in the middle of Saigon, with a beautiful garden, and green shutters on all the windows. My father drove everywhere in a big car and he was very, very important.

He was also a very brave man and he decided to stay in Saigon when the communists came, to try and protect the people. But as soon as they took over the city they threw him in prison and used our fine house as a barracks for their soldiers. We never saw my father again.

My mother and I were forced to live on the streets, begging for food.

But the communists did not want people to live on the streets, everyone was supposed to have work in their new utopia, so we were sent to an SEZ, a Special Economic Zone, in the countryside. It was at a place called Le Minh Xuan and it was one of the first and largest of the SEZs, ten kilometers from Saigon. They made us dig irrigation canals, building mud into walls with our bare hands. The communists gave us nothing in return; no food and no shelter. We had to do everything for ourselves, starting from nothing. We had to build our own huts and grow our own food as best we could. If we were able to raise any pigs or chickens we had to sell them back to the state at a stupid low price. Life was very terrible. Those who did not starve were killed or maimed by unexploded mines while working in the fields.

We survived there for two monsoons, but one night my mother whispered to me that we certainly would not survive another season. So like many others we returned to Saigon, once again sleeping in parks and on sidewalks, begging and stealing to survive.

We learned to live as pavement hawkers. My mother would buy one packet of cigarettes on the black market, then sell the cigarettes one at a time to make a small profit. We squatted on the sidewalk from dawn to sunset every day, peddling cigarettes. But still we could not make enough money even to eat properly, so my mother finally sold her wedding ring. She had kept this hidden from the communists all the time we were in the SEZ, clinging to the hope that my father was still alive. But now she pawned it and used the money to buy a big bundle of old clothes from a Chinese woman in Cholon. Then we resold the items one by one on the pavement outside the Central Market. But it was very dangerous and we had to move on quickly if we saw police or soldiers.

For a while everything was all right. But then one day the police arrested us and we were sent back to the Zones.

This time it was the SEZ at Rach Gia. The camp was much worse even than Le Minh Xuan. It was run like an army regiment. The people were divided into five battalions of four companies, each consisting of one hundred people. A communist cadre was appointed to each ‘company’, and it was his job to interrogate everyone about their past. They were looking for people who had sympathized with the Americans.

The worst thing about Rach Gia was that there was hardly any water. We could not irrigate the crops, and anything that did grow was eaten by insects. Most of the children suffered from malnutrition and many others died of disease.

Fortunately it was not a very difficult camp to escape from - everyone who had been sent to Rach Gia zone eventually found their way back to the city. That’s what we did. We walked all the way back to Saigon, and went back to living on the street.

My mother still had a little gold, some tiny ingots, which she had kept hidden. Do not ask me how, it is very private, how she did it. When we got back to Saigon she sold the gold bars and then we went back to Cholon, found the same old Chinese woman who had sold us the clothes. Now she was selling china plates and my mother bought a big box from her and again we went back to being hawkers, dodging the soldiers all the time. There was very big money doing this, as long as we did not get arrested. My mother sold the plates and I was the lookout.

One day she told me we must escape from Vietnam, that our life was never going to get any better. The only way you could escape was by living near the sea where the boats were, but to move to another place you had to have the right papers. My mother used all the money we made selling the plates to bribe an official from the government. He forged the documents for us. The cadres made a lot of money doing this.

My mother then paid two yaels to a man who had a boat and the next day we went to Vung Tau. But the boat never came. I remember my mother cried and cried. I had never seen her cry so much, even in the Zones. I was very frightened, I thought she was going to die from crying.