Saigon Red

by Gregory C. Randall

  Twenty yards ahead, the Ghost veered out of the surge, stopped, and leaned his bike against the wall of a noodle shop. In the glow thrown by overhead fluorescent lighting, a thin and beautifully delicate woman stirred a large pot over a gas burner. Alex and Javier cruised by, not turning their heads. In his mirror, Javier watched the man approach and kiss the woman on both cheeks. Javier then found an assembly of motorbikes parked behind an electronics shop a half block away. Between the outdoor shelves, with a radio blaring the sound of the Clash’s “Rock the Casbah,” they watched the Ghost eat his dinner.

  “Culture, ain’t it great?” Alex said in his ear.

  “You must see your father,” Yvette Phan said to Lin as he ate his soup. “Your sister and brother have missed you, and your mother is sick in her heart. They don’t know whether you’re alive or dead.”

  “Thank you for keeping our secret, Grandmother. I asked too much of you. Only a short time more, and then you can tell them.”

  “Yes, you have asked too much. They have a right to know.”

  “They know.”

  “They know? How?”

  Lin told his grandmother about the conversation he’d heard that evening, about the man named Roger and the woman. He didn’t tell her about the CIA agent, or the reason he was spying on the couple. They were part of an investigation he was conducting. His grandmother believed his story that he was a member of the state police, an undercover secret agent—that was the reason she couldn’t reveal him to her son. He did nothing to dissuade her from the belief. He wasn’t sure what she would do if she were to learn his real profession.

  “Roger is alive? This woman, this American, is his daughter?”

  “Yes, Grandmother. All of this is a shock to me as well.”

  “And you say that your father knows?”

  “Yes, he knows about his father.”

  Yvette removed a small cloth from her pocket and began to cry in small, heartrending sobs. Lin didn’t know what to do. His sociopathic callousness made it almost impossible to empathize with anyone. He now realized how bad it had become when he couldn’t even feel the grief or happiness of his grandmother. He truly hated himself.

  “After all these years, may I tell your father about you?”

  “Soon. I will tell him first, Grandmother. But be careful. There are some who would exploit this knowledge. It would put me in danger. I’m not sure about this American, this woman who claims to be my father’s half sister.”

  “God will provide.”

  “Yes, Grandmother. He has done me many great favors and kept me safe.”

  Lin finished his dinner and kissed his grandmother goodbye. He looked up the street to the electronics store, mounted his bike, and turned into the flow of late-night traffic. He went slowly for the first few blocks so that the Americans, who had followed him, would have time to catch up.

  “Are they following me?” he asked into the microphone of the helmet.

  “Yes, they are a hundred meters behind you,” the voice answered.

  “Let me know when they’ve gone.”

  “Yes, Con Ma.”

  The last four hours had irrevocably changed him. He needed to know more about this woman. He knew the name Alex. That was the name that Lucchese had used—Alex Polonia. The name meant nothing to him, and now she was his aunt, or half aunt, if there were such a thing. Alex—a strange name for a woman. She apparently worked for the same security company that guarded—poorly—Lucchese’s technology facility. Would she turn on her own people for money?

  Lin spent the next hour randomly driving around the city trying to lull them into complacency, into making a mistake. He asked the AI in his helmet to find anything it could about the CIA agent and a cop named Alex Polonia from Cleveland. He also asked about information on Roger Polonia. More than once he looked at the shadow of the motorbike following him silhouetted in the confusion of headlights and taillights. The motorbike the man was driving was at least twenty years old and could barely go fifty kilometers an hour. Tired of the game, and after crossing over the Sai Gon Bridge, Lin accelerated at three times the speed of the man’s ancient machine. He made three dramatic turns and disappeared into the sticky night of Saigon’s District 2.

  “They are gone,” the voice said.

  CHAPTER 35

  Phan had not mentioned to his wife any of what had happened. Nothing about Alex or Roger Polonia, nothing about a sister or a family in Cleveland, Ohio, and sadly nothing about their son Lin. He’d slept maybe an hour. Much of the previous night he’d spent sitting in the small patio outside their home, smoking cigarettes and finishing a bottle of scotch.

  When Jessica had come out last evening, she’d brought a tray with tea and cookies. She asked what was bothering him. Never one to lie, he’d simply said, “A case I’m working on.” He would tell her more, soon. After twenty-six years of marriage, she understood. They’d married young, both at twenty. A boy came soon after, a boy they learned was damaged. They’d protected him as much as possible, but that protection could only reach so far. Lin had had a juvenile record by the time he was fourteen. Phan had bailed him out of jail more than once, and his fellow officers had helped to keep it quiet. Three days after Lin’s seventeenth birthday, he’d disappeared. Phan tried to trace the boy but had found nothing except for one spark of hope, a report of someone who may have looked like Lin crossing into China a few weeks after the boy went missing. He had used a different name. That was eight years ago. Phan had heard reports since then of people who had died after crossing paths with his son before he disappeared, but he had refused to believe them—until now.

  After Jessica left, he’d turned over the photo, the one that Alex had passed to him. The hair was all wrong—why would he do that? The boy’s face was sparer, the blue eyes darker, angrier, but there was no denying that the face was that of his son.

  Where had he been? Why hadn’t he let his mother know where he was? There were too many questions, questions that had no answers—yet. He would wait to tell his wife when he had answers.

  Phan had traced his finger over Lin’s face. His son was a murderer, a criminal, and from what was said, a spy working for the Chinese government. How much damage had he done? Who else had he killed?

  My son’s become an animal. He is the evil that I’m fighting—feral, wild, and now a pariah—someone who contributes to the world’s problems. Where did we go wrong?

  The note with his supposed half sister’s phone number sat next to the photo. He’d thought for a long moment, sipped his tea, then dialed and set up a meeting with Alex Polonia. They needed to talk.

  That was last night. Now dawn was coming. He took a quick shower and dressed. By the time he reached his office, he was damp with sweat. A tap on his door, and Phan looked up.

  “There’s a man here to see you, Detective Phan,” his assistant said. “His card.”

  Phan looked at the business card: “Agent Javier Castillo, Central Intelligence Agency.”

  It only gets better.

  “Show him in, Sergeant.”

  When the man walked into his office, Phan extended his hand, and the man took it. Phan then pointed to a chair to the right of his desk.

  Phan lit a cigarette. “She failed to mention you, Agent Castillo. Alex never said anything about the CIA or you. Your being here is, of course, no coincidence. Can I assume she’s why you’re here?”

  “God, you are so like your sister. She does the same thing—direct, in your face. At times, it’s infuriating.”

  “More’s the pity.”

  “Detective Phan, that is not the primary reason I’m here. My government is troubled that your son may be involved in the theft of critical software and proprietary designs that affect the safety and security of governments around the world. And because he is your son, we are also concerned about the integrity of the Ho Chi Minh City and Vietnamese police departments.”

  “That’s a lot of concerns, Agent Castillo. In fact, almost too many for
this conversation. It is well above, what you call, my pay grade. And since I’m paid shit, that’s pretty much my attitude about your government and those that work for it. Please, go play your games elsewhere. Two Americans are dead, and my superiors don’t give a damn. Some are still fighting that war. What are two more dead Americans?”

  “And you, Detective? Are you still fighting that war?”

  “No. I simply think murder destroys order. I like order. I like simplicity and respect. Since yesterday, much of that order in my life has been thrown into the air like rice chaff. I’m still trying to catch the bits. I’m a simple cop. That said, I may lose my job over the actions of a delinquent son and an American family I never knew existed.”

  “Do you know where your son is?”

  “No. I haven’t seen my son for eight years. He’s broken his mother’s heart, and his brother and sister barely remember him—and now this. I’m going on what that woman has told me as the truth. Since my DNA is not on file, I’m having my people do their own tests. They’ve already run the test on the blood at the scene of the crime. I will know after the tests are concluded. I want a sample of Ms. Polonia’s DNA to confirm her story.”

  “I’ll have copies of the tests delivered to you.”

  Phan waved his cigarette in the air like a pointer. “And that will prove what? No, I’ll take the sample personally, and we will process it. Then I’ll see.”

  “I can’t make her do it.”

  “Don’t bother. I’m seeing her in a half hour.” He studied the man. “I assume that you’re sleeping with this woman, my alleged sister?”

  “That is none of your business.”

  “Soon it might be.”

  “Do you know a noodle shop called Yvette’s? On Mac Dinh Chi in District 1?”

  Phan carefully ground the cigarette in the large ashtray on his desk, his eyes never leaving the CIA man. “Why?”

  “I followed Lin, Con Ma as we call him, last night. He went to this noodle shop, parked his motorbike, and talked to an older woman. She fed him. He acted as though he knew her. Any idea who she is?”

  Phan lit another cigarette, then lied. “No, I have no idea.”

  “Had to ask. She seemed happy to see him. Alex said that her father once knew a woman called Yvette . . . Coincidence? He stayed less than an hour, then went north over the river and disappeared.”

  Phan smiled. “I assume that you were following him and he shook you.”

  “It happens, sometimes.”

  “Even to the best of us. I will contact you if something comes up.” He waved the agent’s card. “Good day, Agent Castillo. You know your way out.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Alex and Phan walked together along the waterfront in front of the Luccheses’ apartment building. Phan found an open table and sat and motioned to Alex. She sat across from him.

  She spoke first, even though Phan had called her. “I apologize for the way I presented the photo yesterday,” Alex said. “It was insensitive.”

  “I’m not sure there was a better way,” he replied. “We’re both police officers. Direct is best, no matter how it hurts. I need to know for sure who you are, and who we are to each other. I’d like to believe you, but I need more.” He removed a tube from his jacket. “Just a normal cheek swab. My people will do the test. Then we’ll see.”

  “That may take too much time.”

  “I’m already rechecking the crime-scene blood samples to match my DNA with Con Ma’s. I want to be sure he’s Lin Van. I will also compare the sample to yours. May I?”

  “Sure, why not,” Alex said.

  Phan opened the tube and removed the long cotton swab. Five seconds later he returned it to the tube and sealed it. “To be honest, I hope that this is a match. For years I’ve fought with myself over my father and who he may be. Was he alive? What had his life been like? Why hadn’t he ever looked for me?”

  “I haven’t talked to him yet. I was waiting to hear from you. He knows about Lin—I have told him that much. May I tell him about you?”

  Phan lit a cigarette. “I’m not sure that I can stop you—yes. The man, like me, needs to know.”

  “I will be as direct as possible,” she continued. “But there has to be a confirmation. He’ll understand. I just hope my brothers, when they find out, realize what this means.”

  “Thank you. But I warn you, if this is all a trick, you and your company will be escorted to the airport and never allowed back in. I will make it my purpose in life to see that—”

  “This is all true. My initial reaction was the same—that you’re using us to find a way to your son.”

  “The cynical cops in us—it puts us on guard.”

  “Truth sounds different to the listener.”

  “My mother’s family was respected and honored in our village for hundreds of years. The war changed all that. The village was destroyed, hundreds killed. Mother says that was where they were going when they were ambushed.”

  “The same story my father tells.”

  Phan looked out over the skyline of Ho Chi Minh City, then to the Saigon River. “There are photos my mother has of this river, full of ships.” He pointed. “Massive merchant ships were tied to these same piers. Many were American military ships, even a small aircraft carrier. All here to kill Vietnamese. This riverfront has never been as busy as it was then. The Americans came, then left, leaving nothing but tears.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Alex said.

  “You still argue in your country about Civil War monuments,” Phan said. “No war is ever forgotten, no matter how much we try to rewrite history. Much has happened to this city during the last twenty years. It belongs to the youth now. Sometimes, I don’t recognize it.”

  “My father—I mean our father—wondered what had changed since he lived in that apartment building, the one where he met your mother.”

  Phan looked back through the park to the concrete edge of the old wharf. “A few blocks that way”—he pointed—“is where the apartment building stood. It’s been gone a long time. It’s now part of a new waterfront redevelopment. My mother showed me the burnt-out building when I was a child. She said the Viet Cong blew it up.”

  “How is your mother? I’m sure that will be one of the first things my father will ask.”

  “She’s well. In fact, she still opens her noodle shop every day. It keeps her busy.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Your friend, CIA agent Castillo, stopped by my office less than an hour ago.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “He’s pressuring me to go after my son. I am not one to be pressured.”

  “Me neither—it runs in the family.”

  “Unfortunately, he also told me something that’s breaking my heart: my mother has known about Lin, and they’ve remained in contact. She has kept the truth from me. There must be something else, a reason for her silence.”

  “Families are complicated. I’m sure her intentions are good.” Alex kept her knowledge about Lin’s late-night dinner to herself. She was certain Yvette was her father’s Yvette, but she needed confirmation this woman was the same person. She’d wait.

  “I’m sure she’s afraid if I catch him, I’ll throw him in prison.”

  “Will you?”

  “That will be up to him. First, I need to better understand him, and most importantly, I need to know for sure Lin is this Con Ma. Please be cautious. No matter who he is, he is extremely dangerous—a cornered snake will strike at anything.”

  CHAPTER 37

  “Mr. Lucchese is at the plant,” Maria said. “He left with Mr. Karns. Mrs. Lucchese saw you from the terrace talking with someone in the park below. She told me to tell you that she was taking the children to their school. You were supposed to go with them.”

  “That was supposed to be this afternoon,” Alex said. “Why did they leave early?”

  “I’m not sure. Someone called, and she gathered up the children. She said she would tak
e a taxi since Mr. Karns, or that Mr. Quan, wasn’t available.”

  “Did she say when they’d be back?”

  “No, the school is just a short trip. Do you want me to call her?”

  “I will. Thank you, Maria.”

  She looked at her phone: two messages, one from Ilaria, the other from her father. She went to the terrace and clicked on the speaker.

  “Ilaria, I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I thought we were going this afternoon.”

  “The headmaster called and had an opening this morning,” Ilaria said.

  “I’ll be right there,” Alex answered.

  “I’m almost done. Just some paperwork. He also gave me a list of clothes and supplies.”

  “How are the children?”

  “They’re getting a tour. We’ll be home soon. Alex, Mr. Lucchese is not happy. You’re spending too much time away from the children. Who was that man you were talking to in the park? I saw you.”

  “A policeman. Mr. Campbell asked me to talk with him.”

  There was a pause in their call while Ilaria talked to someone else. “Yes, Mr. Smythe, I will have my husband look at the paperwork. We’ll return it to you tomorrow.” Then, “Alex, we’ll be home soon. We can talk about this matter when I return.”

  “Yes, Ilaria.” Alex clicked off.

  Alex then called her father. It would be late at night, but it couldn’t wait—he had to learn about Phan and Yvette.

  He answered before she could say hello. “Are you okay? Is everything all right?”

  “I’m fine, Dad. It’s late. Is Mom there?”

  “Yes, upstairs asleep. We talked about what you discovered. She said she thought this day might come. Sweetie, I adore your mother. She’s more than I could ever want or need. Hard to believe that we’ve been married almost forty-five years. Vietnam was so long ago. For years I’ve tried to ignore it, but now it’s all a strange and even miraculous thing.”

  “I found them.”

  “You found Yvette?”

  “Yes. You and Yvette have a son. His name is Tran Phan.”

  “Yes, that was her last name, Phan. I couldn’t remember it. How did you find them?”