Play the Red Queen

by Juris Jurjevics

  A seven-course lunch followed, served on fancy place settings brought from Gia Long Palace. The fingers of Diem’s hands were stained yellow with nicotine from his incessant chain-smoking, but he didn’t touch any of the liquor. I recognized the type. There were wannabe priests like him in every firehouse and police precinct in Pennsylvania. Well-intentioned, overcommitted, on the side of the angels. Except this one was a dictator. Diem was easy to underestimate. Everyone knew about Diem’s overflowing prisons, the political rivals he’d iced. But it was hard to imagine this roly-poly schlub pulling the Montblanc pen, fat as a cigar, out of his breast pocket to sign death warrants. Diem might have dedicated the country to the Virgin Mary, but the wrath of God still came upon him, I supposed.

  After lunch we headed for Dalat. Mountain forests and sleeping volcanoes passed beneath us as we circled the one-time colonial hill station where the French went to escape the weather in the lowlands. The houses looked unreal, like Swiss chalets set down on evergreen slopes. We landed after three. The air smelled of pine and wildflowers. It was sixty-four degrees but we shivered like we had come down in the Arctic.

  The important passengers got in an oversize black Mercedes and drove off: Diem and the Lodges in back, Mike Dunn and the town’s mayor on the jump seats. Mr. Vy and I followed in a Land Rover. An armored car led the way and another brought up the rear, .50-caliber machine guns at the ready.

  The president stopped to personally point out primitive Montagnard houses of wood and thatch sitting on posts high off the ground. The normally bare-breasted tribal women had been provided USAID bras for the sake of Diem’s prudish modesty. The Western underwear looked absurd and shameful.

  We stopped at the Nhus’ mountain retreat, a huge new mansion with cathedral ceilings, surrounded by arbors and flowering gardens. Ivy rose in wide columns on either side of the entry. The three youngest Nhu kids were in residence, enjoying the Olympic-size swimming pool in back. The oldest daughter was abroad with their mother. As their uncle, the president, warmly greeted each child, I could tell from Lodge’s expression that in spite of himself the ambassador, like his Catholic assistant, Mike Dunn, was growing a little fond of Diem.

  Toward evening, Diem hosted dinner at his own villa. Two rings of sentries stood guard outside; Mr. Vy and me, inside. I eyed the help, but they were all longtime retainers, which made the host and guests relax; me and Mr. Vy less so. We both knew the VC had people everywhere, among the young servants and the old retainers. So did Brother Nhu. I wondered if Mr. Vy had any idea Nhu was having him watched.

  The mayor of Dalat and his wife, Mrs. Lodge and the ambassador, Mike Dunn, and the president of South Viet Nam shared an elegant meal. Mr. Vy and I sat at opposite ends of the room, eating off trays.

  Most of the table talk was in French. After the town’s mayor and his lady left around eleven, Mike Dunn, Diem, Cabot and Emily Lodge stayed up, switching to English. I heard Diem mentioning the Commodity Import Program and saying to Lodge that he didn’t think he could continue to govern if it wasn’t restored soon. The ambassador didn’t offer any assurances.

  “In a subversive war,” Diem said, “one should expect all sorts of unpleasant surprises from one’s enemies, and sometimes also from one’s friends. With or without the aid, I will keep up the fight, and I will always maintain my friendship toward the American people.”

  The president lit a cigarette with a Dunhill lighter that looked like a gold Pez dispenser. I fired up a Camel and snapped shut my Zippo. Lodge asked about the president’s personal security measures. Diem assured him he was perfectly safe and in complete control of both his government and the armed forces.

  “Yes, we hear you are keeping busy with prophylactic measures.”

  “Counselor Nhu advises that to make an omelet of a threatened coup,” Diem said, “one must crush the eggs. Smash them before they hatch, n’est-ce pas?”

  Lodge urged Diem to consider keeping Madame Nhu abroad permanently. The president shook his head no, explaining what a respected position she held in the family as its only mother. He, Brother Cẩn, and Archbishop Thục were all childless bachelors. Given Madame Nhu’s four children, her role in the family’s future was central. She needed to remain close.

  “Of course, I understand,” Lodge said politely, sounding resigned.

  I was out on my feet, praying they’d turn in, when the ambassador took a last crack at swaying Diem. He raised the president’s mishandling of the Buddhist crisis and implored him to implement a change in approach he could report at his upcoming meeting at the White House.

  Diem disagreed, saying it was no different than the Negro crisis in the States, that he had ordered his brother to use force against the southern Buddhists just as President Kennedy had ordered his brother to impose the government’s will in the American South. Except, he said, the Vietnamese government had not used snarling dogs and fire hoses and cattle prods to restore order. Crazily, Diem seemed to believe the Kennedy brothers were the ones who had turned the dogs and fire hoses on Negro demonstrators.

  Lodge didn’t even attempt to challenge this cuckoo reasoning and bid Diem a friendly goodnight. One-thirty chimed as I walked the couple back to the guest house, a huge colonial villa. A contingent of ARVN soldiers were camped around the building.

  I went in first. The place was an icebox. A fire had been laid in the stone hearth in their bedroom. I checked to make sure it was only paper knots and wood, opened the flue and set a wooden match to the kindling. When the flames rose, I put the screen in place, turned back the purple silk quilts on their bed and checked the rest of the place thoroughly. One room was filled with the slipcovers that had obviously protected all the furniture before the Lodges arrived. Clouds of mosquitoes rose as I disturbed the pile. I retreated and closed the door.

  Lodge headed straight for bed. Emily invited me to join her for some tea. We made our way to the kitchen, where she put water on to boil.

  “You were right about the ghosts at the residence,” she said. “It does have an unhappy past.”

  The other embassy wives had told her that the previous tenants, the Richardsons, hadn’t been able to hire any staff at all at first, because the villa stood on the grounds of a French prison where the Deuxième Bureau had secretly tortured political prisoners. During the war, imperial Japanese occupation forces had found the place handy for particular interrogations and summary executions. Then after Tokyo surrendered, Ho’s Viet Minh had used it for storing and questioning prisoners. Few who were detained there in any era emerged the same at the end of their stay, if they emerged at all. Over the decades, hundreds had suffered torture and endured bad deaths on the grounds.

  “It’s the Times Square of ghosts,” I said.

  The kettle whistled. She quickly found the strainer and loose tea, which she tossed into a plain blue teapot. The boiling water brought out a wonderful aroma.

  “While Cabot was at the parade yesterday, I did as you instructed about the mirrors,” Emily said. “It caused a terrible ruckus among the staff when they came down. We couldn’t enlist any Buddhist monks on short notice but our ancient cook recommended a ritual specialist who came immediately with his assistants and set to work, using nothing more than a veil and some joss sticks jabbed in a flowerpot. There was no need to understand the language. The ritual was . . . extraordinary. We were mesmerized, witnessing an invisible transformation we absolutely felt. Everyone was moved by his incantations. Everything went splendidly until one of the Marines took a Polaroid picture—whereupon pandemonium struck. The camera upset our staff no end. Watching the instant picture develop set them off even worse.”

  She produced the photo from an envelope in her pocketbook. The Polaroid was slightly blurry and oddly colored. No ghosts, but chilling nonetheless. On one side of Emily Lodge, in headdress and earrings, wearing eyeliner but no other makeup, stood Huyen. On the other, his assistant, the young man on the Vespa.
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  “He quieted the Vietnamese really masterfully,” she said, “and then completed the ritual. The groundskeepers and house staff meekly returned to work.”

  I nodded. I didn’t want to upset her. As casually as I could manage, I asked if she would let me keep the Polaroid temporarily. Though slightly surprised, she agreed. We warmed our hands on the tea and bid each other goodnight.

  I decided my room was too far back from theirs, so I took the bedding to the front room and laid a fire. The dry wood roared when set alight. From my valise, I unpacked a stubby grenade launcher and its big shells, half of them buckshot, the rest grenade loads. If anything went down tonight, it wasn’t going to happen quietly.

  I lay down in my clothes, one hand tucked in my armpit, the other gripping the launcher.

  Monday morning we got driven to the war college for the ten o’clock dedication of the Mark II reactor. After long-winded speeches, rods were pushed and pulled to gin the thing to life. Diem declared the reactor would churn out 250 kilowatts forever. Lunch followed, and a quick closed-door session between Diem and Lodge. From Lodge’s expression, I could tell Diem wasn’t giving an inch. Whatever sympathy he had felt for Diem the day before was evaporating fast. At five o’clock, we were back in the air, on our way to Saigon.

  When we landed, an embassy Marine handed Mike Dunn a note from Mrs. Lacey letting him know his wife and two kids were en route from the States. I leaned into the back window and told Dunn he had to arrange for the immediate dismissal of the cook at the embassy residence. I showed him the Polaroid of Huyen, explained who he was, and insisted that the cook who had enabled his access to the residence had to be fired and evicted under guard. The Polaroid needed to go directly to Donald.

  Robeson picked me up a few minutes later. After the sleepless night I’d had in Dalat, I passed out in my clothes and didn’t wake until first light.

  I found a note from Flippi on my desk: Just a reminder, son. Friday’s the first of the month. Payday!!! The fool had signed it Jesse James.

  The bottom radio in our stack of sidebands piped up, reporting a bombing, American personnel possibly involved. Robeson and I acknowledged the call and rushed off to investigate, worried that the Red Queen’s Unit Eight was changing tactics and going for bigger body counts.

  Just a small incident, the white mice informed us when we arrived—a ball of plastique rolled into a Chinese restaurant. Shattered glass lay everywhere. The place reeked of splattered food and flesh. A woman dusted with debris slumped so far forward in her chair she was folded in half, forehead to the floor. Almost silly looking, like an upside-down doll, except she was stone-cold dead. Her breakfast companion remained in his seat, alive and unblinking, not registering anything being said to him by the ambulance attendants taking his vitals.

  “Nooo Mỹ, nooo Mỹ,” the plainclothes dick kept repeating, meaning no Americans. We nodded and left, grateful not to have to wade through body parts looking for pieces of US personnel to bag up.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Corporal Magid said “Donald,” no last name, had called for us several times while we were out. Said it was important.

  I tried several times to raise Donald on the phone but couldn’t get through, so Robeson drove me over to the embassy. After checking with Mrs. Lacey to make sure the residence cook had been fired, we went to find Donald.

  “Picked up your soothsayer this morning,” he announced, real casual, like my sending him the Polaroid had nothing to do with it. “He was cooped outside Ambassador d’Orlandi’s, right next to MAC-V on Pasteur. Some balls, right? Lodge was there for a private parlay. Found a camera on Huyen too. Just had these developed.”

  He spread some prints on the desk: Lodge dining with fellow diplomats at the Caravelle, walking amidst admirers, arriving at d’Orlandi’s door.

  “Trouble is, we can’t have a candid talk with the soothsayer. The Agency’s just been ordered to back off, drop everything, not pursue the Red Queen matter further. So what the hell do we do with the guy?”

  Robeson’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Who ordered you to stand down?”

  “Ambassador Sab-o-tage himself. New priority. Our intel and Air Force intelligence says the coup is coming in the next forty-eight hours. Pacific Command in Hawaii has a naval task force standing off the coast prepared to evacuate dependents as needed.”

  “What’s this, the third or fourth time we’ve heard that warning?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Donald said, “the coup’s always forty-eight hours away until the generals find themselves in ‘equipoise,’ as Lodge likes to say. And then nothing. Which is why my money’s on the Red Queen touching up Diem before the mutineer generals ever get their shit together. But I’ve got a direct order. Which means if there’s information to be had from Huyen, you’ll have to get it out of him. We’re to dispose of our catch and step away.”

  “Fuck,” I said. They were the interrogation experts, not us.

  Donald gave us the address and scribbled a note. “I’ll radio ahead. Present this and they’ll give him over. Better you get him than the slopes. They’ll just waste the asset, pun intended.”

  We bolted downstairs and vaulted into our jeep.

  “I don’t get it,” Robeson said. “Why would the ambassador muzzle CIA? Especially since he’s in her sights? Whether she’s coming for him next or saving him for later, she’s coming.”

  “I’m not so sure he minds her gunning for him. Takes him back to his war. But the coup is close. The drawbridges are going up. Soon it’ll just be us CIDs out here with Miss VC Assassin and the SEPES creeps from The Crypt.”

  We tore ass over to the little Ton Nol Hotel, screeched to a halt and jogged briskly into the humble lobby. Ton Nol wasn’t much of a hotel, just two small floors above a narrow reception area. CIA had commandeered the entire second floor. We found Huyen in a back room with a view of the alley, immobilized on a slat-board bed, handcuffed and his arms lashed together at the elbows for good measure. Eyeliner did nothing to conceal the dark circles of fatigue, or the sudden look of terror at seeing us again. The agent in charge read Donald’s note and said, “Knock yourselves out,” as he handed over the keys to his cuffs.

  We took custody, put an extra fatigue shirt on him to cover the restraints and hustled him into the front seat of the jeep.

  “What do we do now?” Robeson said.

  “Grill him.”

  “I’m not sure I have enough of the lingo to do that.”

  “You’re not gonna be discussing philosophy. We just need the who, where, and when. He speaks French. Your French will be enough.”

  Robeson jabbered questions at Huyen as I drove. The man gave up nothing.

  The clock was ticking. We couldn’t ride around all day with a sullen, cuffed Vietnamese prisoner in the front seat of an open jeep.

  “What are we gonna do with him?” Robeson said.

  I had an idea. I drove toward Tan Son Nhut along the long parched stretch of tarmac where the poorer locals liked to picnic on weekends, through Soul Alley where Robeson went sometimes to shack up with his Malaysian girlfriend. We turned in to the line for the airbase. Jets were screeching into the air every thirty seconds. The MPs waved us through. I drove to the far end of the field and the 120th Aviation Company at the back of a small warehouse that Flippi had turned into a repair shop for helicopter engines.

  Flippi’s buddies told us he was finishing up processing for his departure, but due back any minute. They pointed us to his work area at the rear where engines sat on blocks or hung suspended from a frame made of steel girders. The airfield’s siren announced high noon. The mechanics knocked off for chow, leaving us alone in the large space.

  “What’re you intending to do?” Robeson said. “Take him up in a Huey for a little heart-to-heart in the wild blue yonder?”

  I shook my head. I was counting on Flippi. The rest of us fake
d hard-assed nasty. He was the real thing, a mean fucker ever since Korea when the gooks had slithered into our lines in the pitch-black, freezing night and slit the throats of half the GIs asleep in the two-man holes. Flip had awoken next to his dead best friend. He was never the same after that, never took another prisoner. If anybody needed terrifying, those eyes could do it.

  “Hey, you guys come to see me off in style?” Flippi said, walking in, giddy at the prospect of a nearly two months’ leave stateside with his re-up bonus in his pocket.

  “Couple days, Ellie,” he said in a stage whisper. “You ready?”

  He gave me a meaningful look in case I’d forgotten our Friday appointment with the oil company bagman and his eighty thousand beautiful dollars.

  Afraid he might say more in front of Robeson, I quickly explained our situation. I worried he might not appreciate my hitting him up for a tough favor so close to the end of his tour. But he lit up. Flippi was hot to test-drive his machine, he said, but no way was he erecting the whole thing again. The blade alone would have to do.

  “You’ve got it here?”

  “Hell, yes.” He gestured grandly, like a ringmaster presenting a prize elephant.

  A narrow box of thick rough wood rested on a pallet, covered with a drop cloth he pulled away with a flourish. Flippi released the unsecured sides of the crating and they fell flat, kicking up dust as they struck the concrete floor. The blade stood upright, an enormous axe-head.

  “Can’t resist looking at her,” Flippi said, grinning at the business end of the killing machine. “Gotta close up the crate soon, though. Ships in a few days. It’s going by sea. Me, I wing home on Pan Am with round-eye ladies bringing me cocktails all the way across the fucking Pacific.”

  Flippi took charge of our prisoner and shoved him facedown onto a large empty worktable on big metal wheels. He pushed the table under the girders and trussed Huyen’s ankles to his arms until the man looked like a chicken wing. Hooking a fat cable to his fancy knot, Flip ran the line up to a motor-driven pulley attached to the steel beam resting on the girder frame overhead. When he hit a big red button, Huyen flew toward the ceiling, screaming. He yowled a second time when Flippi held down the black button, dropping the prisoner to eye level. Flip and me wrestled the blade into position under the dangling fortune-teller until it was close to Huyen’s gut. Wiping his brow, Flippi switched on an air compressor real loud.