Saigon (68 page)

In the heart of the city, noisy crowds of GIs were still lurching in and out of the bars, and in Quach Thi Trang Square around the central market some of the homeless refugees who had swollen Saigon’s population to around three million people were already settling down for another night in doorways and on the pavements. Instinctively Joseph and Tarn quickened their pace to put behind them sights which reminded them all too forcibly of what the war was doing to the Saigon they had both known in more tranquil, dignified days, and when they reached the cathedral square they shook hands, bade one another good night and went their separate ways. 

Joseph turned towards his villa on Cong Ly, then halted uncertainly after a few paces; although saddened by his evening with Tam and appalled by what Saigon was becoming, something of the fascination which the city and its people had once held for him still lingered indefinably in the streets. In the clammy heat he was aware suddenly that he still felt a strange, almost pleasurable, sense of disquiet, a kind of restless unease which tautened his senses to the verge of breathlessness, and after a moment’s hesitation he turned back towards the Rue Catinat, which still clung unofficially to its original French name rather than “Tu Do.” Crossing deliberately to the other side of the boulevard to avoid the sidewalk in front of the Continental terrace, he strolled into Le Loi Square. Beneath the massive black statue of Vietnamese Marines in action a small crowd had gathered, and as he drew nearer he saw the bright glare of television camera lights above the heads of the watchers. One of the duties he was preparing to take over at JUSPAO was supervision of the daily press conference in the air-conditioned auditorium on Nguyen Hue Street; the increasingly skeptical crowd of American and foreign correspondents who appeared for the late afternoon briefings on the progress of the war already irreverently termed the sessions “The Five O’clock Follies,” and one of his major tasks was to find a way to lend more conviction to the proceedings. Expecting to find a correspondent of one of the major American television networks recording a commentary, he moved closer out of professional curiosity to hear what was being said, but the sound of a female voice delivering a report to camera in what some Americans called “Mayfair English” surprised him. 

Craning his neck above the heads of the Vietnamese onlookers, he was able to see in the glow of the lights a tall, striking girl in combat boots and a crumpled safari suit of pale linen that suggested she and her camera team had just spent several days in the field filming the war. Her soundman was holding up prompt cards with brief script headings for her behind the camera, and Joseph guessed she was recording a final summary for a film already shot in the war zones. Once or twice as he listened, she fluffed a word because of tiredness and had to repeat the commentary, but the cadences of her voice indicated she had almost finished, and Joseph moved closer when she paused to allow the cameraman to zoom in for a final close-up. 

“I first began reporting this war five years ago when only a few thousand American advisers were involved,” she said, speaking with slow deliberation. “Now there are more than half a million American fighting men in Vietnam. But although official U.S. spokesmen constantly tell us that ‘every quantitative measurement’ shows that the Communists are being beaten, victory, like smoke between the fingers, remains elusive and difficult to grasp.” She paused for a moment to give emphasis to her concluding words, then she added formally: “This is Naomi Boyce Lewis reporting from Saigon.” 

Joseph stared hard at the brightly lit face of the English reporter as her cameraman held the shot to provide some end-footage for their film editors in London, and for a few seconds his memory grappled unsuccessfully with the half-familiar name. Then in the instant that the camera was cut and the lights were switched off, ‘he remembered. The silent crowd of Vietnamese who had been watching the recording being made drifted away with reluctance, and by the time he pushed through to the foot of the statue she was bending to help the crew pack their gear. 

“I couldn’t help hearing your pay-off line, Miss Boyce-Lewis,” he said quietly. “Would you by any chance be related to a Colonel Sir Harold Boyce-Lewis who was with the British Army out here at the end of the Second World War?” 

She turned at the sound of his voice and looked at him with a startled expression. “Do you mean my father. . . ?“ 

The American’s smile broadened and he held out his hand. “I suppose I do. I’m Joseph Sherman. How is Sir Harold? 

“My father was killed here in 1945, Mr. Sherman,” she said in a small voice. Then she looked at him more intently, her eyes brightening with interest. “But if you knew him at all I would love to talk to you some time,” 

The baying of the Hanoi crowd reverberated in Mark Sherman’s ears like the shrieks of tormented sols in hell. They closed all around him, men, women and children, showering him with their spittle, striking him with their fists and feet, ripping handfuls of living hair from his head. Time and time again they drove him to the ground, kicking his face, trampling him against the tarmac road, tripping, stumbling and falling about him like stampeding cattle in their frenzy. Above the heads of the seething mob, the ominous black lenses of television cameras recording the public agony of the fifty shambling United States Air Force and Navy pilots seemed to stretch and elongate themselves until they too were abusing the officers, stabbing at them, knocking them viciously to the ground. The cameramen, Slavic Caucasians from Russia and Eastern Europe and narrow-eyed Chinese and Vietnamese, leered arid grinned gleefully from behind their lenses as they worked, the features of their faces stretching and distorting until, with mouths open wide, they too joined in the hysterical howling of the mob. 

“Bow, Sherman! Bend your head in shame, you filthy Yankee motherfucker! 

The voices of their prison guards loping beside them rang out deafeningly through megaphones that they held clamped against their mouths; the American slang they used was distorted by their accents, but every time an American’s name was called, the crowd immediately took up the chant in shrill imitation. The shrieking rose quickly to a crescendo, then Mark felt the sharp point of a bayonet slash his back and the rifle butt of another guard thudded simultaneously into his solar plexus, forcing him to bend double in agonized response to the rising chants. 

“Kowtow, Sherman! Kowtow! Bow your head! Kill the imperialist air pirates! Hang them for their inhuman crimes against the Vietnamese people!” 

A flame of pain seared his groin as he went down again under a flurry of flying feet. He dragged himself upright only because his partner urged him on; otherwise he would have been content to lie on the ground until they kicked him insensible. At first the vast crowd watching from specially constructed grandstands on either side of the street had stared open-mouthed and in silence as the apprehensive Americans were unloaded from the truck that had brought them from their prisons to the center of Hanoi. They were handcuffed in pairs, and it wasn’t until their blindfolds were removed that the muttering began, and then the crowd had started to spill out of their seats. With the aid of their megaphones, the guards had whipped the mob into a calculated frenzy before pushing the manacled prisoners into their clutches, and the demented screaming had begun almost at once. 

“Johnson is a murderer! Rusk is a murderer! McNamara is a butcherer of women and children!” 

With the hate-filled shrieks reverberating in his ears, Mark felt himself lifted and carried on the surge of the crowd as though he was awash in heavy seas; his clothes were in tatters and blood poured down his face from wounds in his head. He tried to roll over and dig his arms and legs into the mass of bodies to swim free, but he was jerked back violently by the handcuff which chained him by his left wrist to a young navy pilot. The navy man, unconscious now and covered in blood, had already sunk beneath the surface, and Mark felt himself being dragged inexorably downward, felt himself begin to drown in the squirming, seething mass of slippery Asian bodies. He twisted and turned, gasping for air, but the harder he fought, the more closely they pressed about him, and their flesh seemed to liquefy and flow suffocatingly into his mouth and nostrils like water. 

Then the ground beneath him opened without warning, and the feeling that he was drowning gave way to a greater terror: he was tumbling downward Out of a high, bright sky toward distant land below, rolling helplessly in the free air watching his empty F-105D Thunderchief spinning away beneath him, belching smoke. It exploded on a jungle-covered hillside beside the Red River in a bright orange geyser of fire, and angry tongues of flame leaped hundreds of feet into the air, reaching out to his falling body, setting his flying suit and parachute afire, roasting his flesh and accelerating his downward plunge. But as always he somehow fell lightly to earth, landing nimbly on his feet, and he was surrounded in an instant by the same yelling crowd of Vietnamese peasants who always ran screaming from beneath the same clump of lac trees at the foot of the hill on which an old French fort still stood. They beat his body with machetes, cutting him deeply with their crude blades until his own free-flowing blood extinguished the agonizing flames. He drew his .38 pistol, screaming at them to retreat, but as usual they didn’t hear him, and he thrust its muzzle towards the face of the Vietnamese nearest to him. Always, as had happened in reality, the first shot was a red tracer round and it tore a jagged hole in the middle of the peasant’s face. As always the peasant collapsed on top of him, pinning him to the ground, but no matter how hard he struggled, he could never free himself of the scrawny corpse, and its unexpected weight bore him rapidly downward into the soft earth, heavier on top of him, it seemed, than a forty-story building. 

A sea of Vietnamese faces peered curiously over the retreating rim of what had become an ever-deepening grave, and he spotted his mother, the gray-haired Pentagon colonel who had become his stepfather and his brother, Gary, among them; they watched blankly, shaking their heads from time to time in silent bewilderment, and although he tried to cry Out to them, they faded quickly from his sight and immediately he was writhing again in that black, fetid cell where they had first locked his feet into the rusting ankle stocks built by the early French colonizers, Invisible hands shackled his wrists behind him in “hell cuffs,” ratcheting them tightly through flesh and sinew until their jagged jaws bit on the bones of his wrists; in an instant his arms turned black, swelling to twice their normal size, and the open wounds around his wrists turned yellow and festered before his eyes. Bloated green scorpions and black rats scuttled back and forth over him, suppurating boils and sores sprouted like fungus from his limbs again, and bowls of food and liquid floated tantalizingly beyond his reach like disembodied ghosts. Taunting laughter rang crazily in his ears as the starvation and dehydration pains intensified, then the leering face of his Vietnamese torturer whom he had on that first day dubbed “The Swineherd” started to inflate in the tiny confined space of his cell; grew bigger and bigger, like a child’s balloon, forcing him to retreat whimpering into a corner, and the jailer’s slack, drooling maw opened and closed slowly like a fish’s mouth as he repeated over and over again “Bao cao! Bao cao! Bao cao! — Inform! Inform!” 

Although he pressed himself frantically against the wall to try to avoid the ropes that drifted towards him like fronds of dark seaweed, they tightened by themselves around his arms again with an agonizing suddenness; his shoulder blades were forced together in the middle of his back, his breastbone threatened to burst from his chest, and when the familiar fear that his whole body would split open from crotch to gizzard returned, a voice began screaming hideously, providing a high descant to the torturer’s repeated yells of “Bao cao! Bao cao!” This demented shrieking rose quickly to a crescendo like a steam whistle, and Mark eventually realized that he was no longer trapped in the toils of his nightmare but was lying awake on the concrete floor of the punishment cell listening to his own crazed voice. The face of “The Swineherd” close before his eyes too was no longer the suffocating “balloon” of his nightmare but the flesh-and-blood reality of his sadistic jailer. He was shaking him by the shoulder to rouse him, and as his vision cleared, he saw too in the gray light of dawn that the immaculately attired North Vietnamese cadre who had escorted him in the car the night before was standing behind “The Swineherd.” The same faint smile seemed to be fixed upon the cadre’s face, and the moment the screaming died away, he began talking in a soothing voice. 

“You’ve been having bad dreams, Lieutenant Sherman — but you can relax now. I’ve come to take you somewhere we can talk quietly.” Kim stooped and picked up the rabbit’s foot which lay beside the American on the floor and placed it gently in his hand. “Don’t worry anymore — everything will be all right flow.” 

He opened the cell door and stood aside to let Mark pass in front of him, then motioned to “The Swineherd” to follow. Kim directed him into the rear seat of the same Tatra outside in the prison yard and got in beside him; the jailer traveled in the front passenger seat, and only minutes later the car deposited them all in the courtyard of the Ministry of Justice building that stood close to the jail. In an empty interrogation room, a small table had been laid with a simple breakfast of toast, cereal and orange juice, and Kim waved the American towards it while he sat down on a nearby stool and took a buff folder from the document case he carried. The jailer remained on guard by the door, and after eyeing the table suspiciously, Mark sat down and began to eat; crouching in the chair like an animal, he devoured the food noisily, darting suspicious glances at Kim and “The Swineherd” from time to time, as though afraid they might change their minds and try to take it from him. 

“From your file I see on your arrival you chose to undergo extended punishment for three months rather than reveal even your name, service number and date of birth,” said Kim quietly without looking up. “That obviously requires courage of a high order.” 

Mark gazed dully at the Vietnamese for a second, still chewing, then hunched lower over the table to finish the food. 

“It was a great pity you chose to demonstrate your courage in that way. If we’d known who you were from the start, we could have given you special consideration.” When Mark made no response, Kim resumed his reading of the file. After two or three minutes’ silence he glanced up again. “I shouldn’t tell you this, lieutenant, but you are one of the very few prisoners who have refused to condemn your government’s misguided involvement in Vietnam. Almost every one of your fellows has recorded or written denunciations that have been published or broadcast abroad. And why not? Some senators and other important public figures in Washington are now beginning to describe your country’s role here as ‘the gravest treason.’” 

The Vietnamese drew a small tape recorder from his document case and set it up on a small table beside the stool. When he switched it on, the strained voices of other captured American pilots filled the room one after the other, condemning their participation in the war. The adjectives “vile,” “illegal,” and “immoral” were used repeatedly and the pilots frequently described themselves as the “the blackest criminals” who had carried out “inhuman air raids.” But if Mark registered the content of the recordings, he gave no sign, and Kim leaned over and switched the machine off. 

“Reading your file is very interesting, lieutenant, you know, because in your determination not to say those things we would like you to say, you’ve talked about everything else under the sun with your interrogator.” He tapped the file on his lap with his forefinger. “I was very saddened for Instance to learn that you fell out with your father when you were sixteen and have never seen him since. I knew your father too, you see. He’s a remarkable man — he was responsible for saving the life of President Ho Chi Minh in 1945. So we have cause to admire him. And good cause to do something to return his kindness — such as sending home the son he believes might already be dead.” 

Mark raised his head slowly to look at the Vietnamese, and although his gaze still didn’t seem to focus properly, Kim noticed he was frowning as though disconcerted for the first time. 

“Perhaps you’ve forgotten now, but you once told your interrogator you swore never to speak to your father again after he deserted your mother. The file says you were delirious one night arid told the whole story of your quarrel with your father.” 

Mark appeared to make a renewed effort to concentrate on what Kim was saying and leaned forward on the table. Seeing this, Kim rose and walked slowly across the room until lie was standing beside the American. 

“You know that you hurt your father deeply by your behavior because your brother has talked with him, hasn’t lie? You were glad to hear he was suffering for his past indiscretions, weren’t you? But it didn’t make you any more inclined to meet him and talk to him. You wanted to hurt him as much as possible by your silence, didn’t you? You wanted to get back at him at all costs.” Kim paused to study the effect his words were having, and seeing Mark’s frown deepen, he smiled. “But it’s obvious that your father still cares for you despite all that, isn’t it? Otherwise he wouldn’t have taken the trouble to write a letter to our president pleading on your behalf. Despite your harshness towards him he’s obviously still very concerned about you. That’s perhaps more than you deserve, isn’t it?” 

As Kim watched, Mark’s features tautened again as though he was confused by his thoughts; then he looked up at the Vietnamese cadre with a bemused expression in his eyes. 

“Sometimes we go too far in our feuds with those closest to us. We long to take revenge for imagined hurts we’ve suffered, not realizing how cruel we are. I know myself what pain can be caused by strife between father and son, because I quarreled violently with my own father when I was young. Like you, I swore never to have anything more to do with him. He was killed fourteen years ago at the end of the French war, and although nothing has altered to change what divided us then, I’ve always felt a deep sadness that I never did anything to tell him of my feelings before he died. Perhaps the same thing will happen to you. Perhaps you will stay here for many years because of your stubbornness and by the time you are released, your father and your mother may be dead. Have you thought of that possibility?”