War Baby (11 page)

‘I don’t know what I thought.’

‘You’re a bloody liar, Spider.’

‘Of course that’s what I thought.’

‘One of the advantages of being a bastard, mate. You always have a margin to surprise people.’

‘Why don’t you marry her?’

‘Why didn’t you?’

Webb shook his head. What a stupid question.

‘I’m serious,’ Ryan said.

‘She doesn’t love me.’

‘Yeah, strange. Most Vietnamese girls will love anyone who offers to get them out of here. Not this one.’ Ryan shook his head. ‘She won’t leave me, Spider. I told her I’d send her anywhere she wants to go, but she won’t leave without me. She’s got the kid to think about. She’s being perverse.’

‘That’s good coming from you.’

‘I’m immoral, not perverse. There’s a difference.’

Odile was singing Phuong a lullaby, in Vietnamese. He saw her shadow on the wall.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘It’s all arranged. I organized visas for them through the Australian embassy.’

‘And then?’

‘Mate, I’ll try and make a go of it, God knows I’ve run my luck pretty hard, maybe it’s time I gave it a break. Settle down, do a bit of surfing, the odd snap for the Coolongatta Chronicle or some such bloody thing.’

‘Do you love her?’

‘When I’m with her. Mate, I can’t help the way I am. I’m trying to do the right thing here, but a leopard doesn’t change its spots. You’re not like me, mate. Don’t try and understand.’

They listened to the distant thunder; not B-52s, like the old days. Now it was NVA artillery, and getting closer every day. ‘So how’s Washington treating you?’

‘It’s okay. Sometimes I miss all this. Funny though, now I’m back here it scares the hell out of me.’

‘Yeah, well, we’re all scared of something. Most people, it’s dying. Me, it’s boredom.’ He drained his glass and poured three more fingers. ‘Why didn’t you sleep with her? If I’d been in your shoes, I would have done.’

The sudden shift in the conversation caught Webb off guard. He didn’t know what to say.

‘You love her, don’t you?’

Webb shook his head. ‘No.’

Ryan raised an eyebrow to register his incredulity. ‘No?’

Webb looked away so Ryan would not read the lie.

‘Christ, I feel so dirty when I’m around you, mate. You’re a fucking saint. I don’t know how you’ve survived in this world as long as you have.’

Odile finished the lullaby. She reappeared on the balcony, leaned on Ryan’s shoulder and kissed him. ‘Goodnight,
cherie
,' she whispered.

‘You don’t have to go to bed,’ Ryan said.

‘I know all your war stories and I hear all your dirty joke a hundred times. And I am tired.’ She gave Webb a small smile. ‘À bientôt. It was wonderful to see you again.’

He stood up. ‘It was wonderful to see you, too. And Phuong.’

‘I owe you so much,’ she said, and she stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Take care.’

She went back inside, shutting the balcony doors behind her. Ryan looked at Webb. ‘She always talks about you, you know.’

‘Does she?’

‘You must be proud of yourself.’ He drained his glass and poured another. He looked across the alley at his neighbors in the next apartment. A Chinese man in a white undershirt was staring at a flickering black and white television, three small children clustered on the floor at his feet; his wife was sewing clothes at the window. The harsh staccato voices of the television jarred with the clamor of Chinese music on a radio from somewhere further down the alley.

‘What you would have done if I’d died at Que Trang.’

‘I never thought about it.’

‘Then you would have been stuck with it, mate. You would have had to have taken care of her, whether you wanted to or not.’ He grinned. ‘You must have had to think fast that night.’

‘It never crossed my mind. You think I would have let the NVA shoot you?’

Ryan nodded, in acknowledgment. ‘I never thanked you, did I? Sorry. I guess I don’t like thinking how close it was.’

‘You would have done the same for me.’

‘Not if I reckoned there was a good snap in it.’ He refilled their glasses and raised his in toast. ‘What will we drink to?’

‘Saigon?’

Ryan nodded. ‘Yeah. Goodnight, Saigon.’

They touched glasses.

‘People say there’s going to be a bloodbath. I’ve heard stories that the Viet Cong beheaded half a dozen policemen in Danang.’

‘That’s bullshit.’

‘But it could get ugly. Especially if the city comes under heavy shellfire, or there’s door-to-door fighting.’

‘Well, we’ll be long gone.’

‘Yeah, that’s it, isn’t it? The joy of being a correspondent. When the war gets too hot, we can always go home.’ He thought again about McCague, and Judge, and the Special Forces sergeant in the poncho up at Que Trang. ‘Do you think we did any good here?’

‘I don’t know, mate. There’s always going to be wars, and there’ll always be people suffering, usually women and kids. You can’t change that, not with a few snaps.’

‘What about the pictures Eddie Adams took of Loan shooting that VC during Tet? Or the girl running down the road with the napalm on her back. They changed people’s minds about this war back home.’

‘They were ready to have their minds changed. Anyway, we both know that pictures lie. That one of Loan, Jesus! One of his men just had his wife and kids executed by the Viet Cong in his own home. The bloke he shot was the local VC area commander, he was responsible for what had happened. But it put in people’s minds that the South Vietnamese were the only ones committing atrocities. Maybe two years before, not one paper in the States would have run it. But people had changed their minds about the war, and that picture just gave them the justification they wanted.’

‘The war was wrong, and we showed it was wrong.’

‘We were hitting a soft target. We only had access to one side, the Americans gave us transport and tucker so we could get a first-hand look at their stuff-ups and their massacres. That’s true democracy, mate. Where were we when the NVA executed two and a half thousand civilians in Hue and dumped their bodies in mass graves? Get any snaps of that? Besides, Spider, the real story was how affluent Vietnamese arranged for their kids to avoid the draft while half the grunts out in the boonies getting shot to shit were black and Latino kids from American ghettos. We didn’t stop the war, Spider. We just helped someone sell more newspapers and magazines.’

‘If you don’t think it matters, why do you do it?’

‘Taking snaps is the one thing I’m good at. And anyway, when did you get to be so holy? You didn’t come out here to save the world. You were an ambitious little shit like the rest of us and you got lucky at Que Trang.’

Webb didn’t want to listen to this heresy. If what they wrote, what they recorded, did not make a difference, he’d rather be fixing cars or building houses. ‘I still think we did some good here.’

‘The only good thing I’ll do is get Phuong and Odile out of this shithole before Charles gets here. The rest is just an ego trip.’

‘What if it doesn’t work out between you and her? What if you go back and you can’t live a normal life anymore?’

‘Is that what happened to you in Washington?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Spider. If it gets so bad we can’t hack it, there’ll always be another war to go to. World peace is not going to break out in our lifetime. Believe it.’

Every day brought news of another government defeat, McNamara’s domino theory in microcosm. Hue and Danang had been abandoned in March; in early April Cu Chi, in the infamous Zone C, fell to the communists, then the old US stronghold at Bien Hoa.

The ARVN Eighteenth Division made a last-ditch stand at Xuan Loc, but when the garrison fell on 21 April, there was nothing standing between the North and Saigon. That evening Thieu tendered his resignation on television, and soon after rumors swept through the city that he had fled the country with the Bank of Vietnam’s gold reserves.

Queues formed outside the banks and the embassies. The middle class wanted to get out but in the end only the very rich could afford it. An exit visa cost ten million piasters.

Highway 4, the road in and out of the Delta, was severed and Saigon was isolated, encircled by eighteen North Vietnamese divisions. Barbed wire and machine guns appeared outside the palace. A vigorous sunset curfew was put in place.

Webb and Crosby continued to file, Ryan recording the panicked death throes of the city with his camera, taking taxis to the front lines, the ride getting shorter every day. Each morning they asked each other: is it going to be today?

April wore on;
one more day, we’ll hang on one more day ...

Odile waved to Ryan from the balcony of the apartment as he left each morning; she was there when he returned at night. It was as if the war did not exist.

* * *

The flash of artillery fire danced around the horizon like sheet lightning. Ryan sat on the edge of the bed, watching. His body was slick with sweat. The fan creaked on the ceiling, Phuong whimpered in her sleep.

He heard her roll over in the bed, turn towards him. ‘What’s the matter,
cherie
?’

‘The NVA are just a few klicks from the city. It’s nearly over.’

She didn’t say anything.

‘I’ve got the tickets and passports for you and Phuong. The AP’s arranged a special charter flight to take their people out tomorrow. I’ve got you seats on it.’

‘I do not go without you.’

‘Look, don’t be so bloody stupid. Think about Phuong.’

‘She is your responsibility also. You too must think about her.’

‘This is my job, all right? I might have to stay in Saigon after the occupation. Do you understand?’

‘Then we will stay with you.’

‘You can’t. It’s different for me, I’m a foreigner. God knows what they’ll do too you. Do you have any idea what the Khmer Rouge did in Phnom Penh?’

‘That is not my concern. My place is with you.’

‘For Christ’s sake!’

‘I know you will do what is best for us.’

He had underestimated her. He knew what she was doing; she thought that once she was safe he would forget about her, and she was partly right. He’d make sure she had money for Phuong but he was going back to Australia, that was for sure. She was trying to force his hand, the clever bitch.

His shirt lay on the floor beside the bed and he picked it up and fumbled in the pockets. He found the envelope with the travel documents and threw it on the bed. ‘Take the bloody tickets!’ he snapped.

‘No,’ she said, very calm.

He got up and went to the window. The sound voices and tinny music drifted along the alley. He looked at his watch. Almost midnight. Cholon never slept, even during curfew.

Bugger it, he thought. There was no real choice, he would have to do it her way.

He would stay two more days, perhaps three. He would know when it was time to go. When the other correspondents got out, he would go with them and he would take Odile and Phuong.

Two more days.

Perhaps three.

In the early hours of the 28th the airport came under shellfire for the first time. Ryan woke up and smelled smoke. He went to the window; a cordite haze had settled over the Saigon rooftops. He kissed Odile and Phuong goodbye, rushed down the stairs into the street and took a
siclo
into the city.

The streets were choked, trucks, vans and
siclos
piled high with furniture and suitcases. Everyone was ignoring the curfew, panic had taken over. Where were all these people going? he wondered. There was nowhere left to run to.

He went to the AP office to look for Crosby. Webb wasn’t there, Crosby said he’d gone to the Doc Lap palace, he’d heard that one of the army generals, Big Minh, was about to take over the government and try to arrange a last-minute truce with the communists.

There was fighting at Newport Bridge, just half an hour from Saigon.

A Vietnamese had parked his Dodge outside the Caravelle. Both the rear doors were missing and the exhaust manifold was held on with bits of wire but it still ran, and the owner was offering rides out to the front line. Crosby paid him crazy money for the fare and they headed out on the old Bien Hoa road.

The four-lane highway was jammed with cars and buses, bicycles and bullock carts. The tide was all headed the other way; farmers in conical straw hats pushed handcarts loaded with cages of chickens and ducks and rice sacks and ancient wicker chairs; old women clutched the hands of small children as they ran; military trucks barreled through it all, the drivers’ fists jammed on the horn. People were running, eyes wide, like animals running from a bushfire. A pall of dust hung over the road.

This terrible tide washed around them. Ryan finished one roll of film, reloaded his camera and kept shooting, frame after frame.

A Honda had spilled in the middle of the road, and a man lay on the ground beside it, blood forming a sticky pool around his head. His wife was crouched beside him screaming, her children standing behind her in utter anguish. They were all covered in blood, perhaps their father’s, perhaps their own.

Traffic milled around them; a knot of bystanders stood in a group and stared.

Another truck rumbled past. The soldiers in the tray all wore the snarling tiger patch of the Hac Bao battalion, one of the ARVN’s elite units, the men who had fought so fiercely at Hue and Xuan Loc. When they saw Crosby and Ryan they shouted and shook their heads, telling them to go back.

‘This doesn’t look good,’ Crosby said.

Black smoke spiraled into the sky just ahead of them. Their driver stopped the car, refused to go on. Crosby and Ryan jumped out.

Ryan could see the red and yellow liberation flag of the Viet Cong among the palm trees on the other side of the river. Shadowy figures moved among the burning warehouses on the far bank. He heard the crackle of small-arms fire.

The government paratroopers holding the bridge were crawling up the span, preparing to counterattack. Well, he wasn’t going to get any good snaps standing here.

‘Come on,’ he said to Crosby.

Crosby shook his head. ‘I don’t like this,’ Crosby said.

‘Wait here for me.’

Ryan started to run. The mortar round landed without warning. Ryan heard a dull thud as it hit the road, and then he was sitting down, watching an olive-drab ARVN truck crackle into flames. A cloud of gritty dust drifted over him. He was aware of people screaming.

He had to get a shot of that truck. He fumbled for the camera around his neck, tried to change the 25-millimetre lens on his Leica to a 105. He didn’t seem able to make his fingers do what he wanted. Everything seemed to be slowing down. He couldn’t focus his eyes properly.

‘Sean! Oh, Jesus Christ, Sean!’ Crosby was standing over him and he looked scared about something. He realized he must be hit. ‘Sean. Christ! Oh, Christ!’

Something was obviously wrong. There was no pain, just an uncomfortable sensation at the side of his head, like sunburn.

‘Tell Spider to look out for Odile,’ he said, but the words didn’t seem to come out right at all.

The next thing he remembered was a bright light hanging in the air above his head and someone saying: ‘I don’t think he’s going to make it.’

After that it went dark.

* * *

The monsoon had come early, the thunder indistinguishable from the sounds of the battle closing in around Saigon. Just two hours before, the city had been bombed from the air for the first time; three American A-37s, captured from Da Nang, had roared over the rooftops and attacked Tan Son Nhut airport.

It was ten o’clock. The guests at the Caravelle, all international journalists, had gathered in the restaurant. The atmosphere was festive; it was almost like a graduation party. They ordered
salade niçoise
with their
trout almondine
, and raised their glasses of wine in a farewell toast, heady with the knowledge that they were witnessing history.

Webb had spent most of the day in taxis, rushing to and from interviews at the palace and the US Embassy, then out to the airport to cover the stalled evacuation, took a last walk along the Tu Do to interview the handful of bar girls who remained. He was wired, physically exhausted, running on adrenalin. He ordered a bottle of Montrachet and some
vichyssoise
and spread his scribbled notes on the tabelcloth, mentally composing his file story.

Then he went back to his room and sat down at his typewriter.

Ten minutes later there was a knock at the door. ‘Who is it?’

No answer.

‘Who is it?’
Angry at the interruption he jumped up and threw open the door. ‘Croz.’

There was blood on his Saigon suit, a lot of it, more caked black into his hair. His face was sickly grey.

‘Ryan?’ he said.

Crosby nodded.

‘How bad?’ The first thing he thought was: what about Odile and Phuong?

‘We went out to Newport Bridge. He was standing right there next to me. Then he kind of sat down, real hard, and when I looked at him it was like the whole side of his head was gone. It was just one fucking mess of blood.’

He was shaking. Webb pulled him inside and sat him down in a chair. He grabbed his Johnnie Walker and splashed some into a glass.

Crosby drank it like it was water.

‘Where is he?’

‘I put him in the taxi and brought him back to Saigon. It was a fuckin’ nightmare. We couldn’t get through the traffic. Must have taken maybe two hours, I don’t know. He was doin’ the funky chicken the whole freaking way. The doctors at the hospital say he’s got shell fragments in his brain. I don’t think he’s going to make it.’

‘Is he still at the hospital?’

‘I used my connections at the embassy. They flew him out of Tan Son Nhut on a Huey to one of the carriers. Shit, man. This is crazy.’ He ran a hand over his face. ‘What a fucking mess.’

Webb grabbed his flak jacket and his helmet, left his cameras on the bed. It felt like he was going out naked without them.

‘What are you doing?’ Crosby asked him.

‘I’m going to get Odile and the kid.’

‘No way, man! It’s fucking insane out there. You can’t go to Cholon! There’s soldiers fuckin’ everywhere, shooting at anything that moves. I didn’t think we were going to make it back from the airport. We’ll wait till the morning, after the curfew. Okay?’ He stood up, put a hand on Webb’s chest. ‘You get shot, you’re not helping anything. We’ll get her tomorrow.’

Webb knew Crosby was right. He slumped on his bed.

‘I knew this would happen.’

‘It will be okay,’ Crosby said.

‘Fuck.’

Crosby reached for the whisky bottle, poured two more shots. ‘I got this,’ he said. It was one of Ryan’s Leicas. There were blood stains on the casing.

‘His camera?’

‘I got some good shots of him, after he was hit.’ He looked at Webb, pleading for sanction. ‘He would have wanted it that way.’

Webb nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘He would.’

* * *

The rockets were 130-millimetre, Russian-made, sleek and black; the Vietnamese called them ‘hissing death’. There was no warning scream as they came in, as with artillery shells. They came during the night, with a sigh, silent as death.

Just after four, Webb sat at the window of his room in the Caravelle watching a premature dawn. The orange glow he could see was a direct hit by one of the rockets on the ammunition dump at Tan Son Nhut. He heard more explosions as other rockets rained down into the slums of Cholon.

It wasn’t only the Americans who made war on civilians, he thought; Ryan was right about that.

He cradled a bottle of Johnnie Walker in his lap. He wasn’t drunk; impossible to get drunk with this much adrenalin pumping through his body. He intended to stay topped up enough to get him through this last night in this damned place. He wasn’t like Ryan, could never be like Ryan. He was afraid.

They said it could all be over as soon as tomorrow.

Tomorrow he would get Odile out of here.