Play the Red Queen

by Juris Jurjevics

  I gave Robeson the nod to ask Huyen again where the Red Queen was hiding. Robeson yelled the question in French. Huyen didn’t answer, just stared at the hundred pounds of bright, sharp steel beneath his abdomen. He started wheezing and gasping for air.

  “Let’s give him a practice swing on the trapeze,” Flippi shouted. I pulled back on Huyen’s bare shins, lined him up and let go, hoping we’d calculated right. He whined in a high pitch as he flew forward over the blade, moaned louder still as he swung back over the sharp steel, straining to arch himself away from it. He couldn’t tell how close he was. Actually, we couldn’t either.

  I caught him at the knees and held him while Robeson repeated the question. He said something in Vietnamese and then in French. Robeson looked at me and shook his head: the man wasn’t answering the question. Flippi cackled like Igor and let out the cable a few inches, dropping Huyen closer to the blade’s edge.

  Flip took the cover off the zinc-lined basket and removed a cabbage. He dropped the head of lettuce onto the blade. It sheared in half instantly. The compressor howled.

  “This combination slicer-dicer,” he barked. “If Junior here don’t spill his guts—it will. Ha ha!”

  An unmuzzled jet engine screamed as it sped a warplane down the closest runway. The deafening sound completely overpowered your senses, your brain. The jet leapt into the air, straining to outrun its unbearable eruptions. How was it Flippi and his crew weren’t all deaf and crazy?

  Flippi recovered the cabbage halves and shoved the smaller one down the front of Huyen’s trousers like a codpiece, hooting with glee.

  “Let him swing free this time,” Flippi shouted, “back and forth.” He lit up a stogie. The cigar smelled like a cat’s ass burning. “Let ’er rip!” he yelled, pumping the air.

  I let go of the feet, hoping again Flip had judged the height correctly. Huyen swung past the blade and back like a pendulum. I pushed him to add some altitude and he shot over the silver blade a second time, moaning as the edge nicked his trousers and the cabbage.

  Flippi cackled. “Looks like we got slaw.”

  Huyen went rigid. I caught him by his ankles and eased him to a halt. If he didn’t have a heart attack, I might. “Ask him again where the Red Queen is,” I yelled in Robeson’s ear, my pulse racing.

  Robeson put it to him, looking a little ill. The fortune-teller answered in rapid French.

  “Says he don’t know nothin’.”

  I signaled. Flippi made a show of pulling out the cabbage like it was a magic trick and lowered our prisoner one more link. The blade was just touching his shirt. As I drew him back it slit the cloth. Huyen hummed high-pitch panic. The next swing would cut him for sure. How deep, none of us knew. Flip dropped him an inch more. Another jet engine raged into the air.

  “If I let go of him it’ll be nasty,” I yelled.

  “Aw,” Flippi whined. “Let me skritch ’im a little.” He revved the compressor higher to cover any screams.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Robeson helped me pull Huyen back by his ankles.

  “Use her real name,” I said to Robeson.

  “Où est la camarade Mai Nguyen?”

  Huyen’s eyes jumped from Robeson to me to Flippi to the huge blade.

  “Tell him he’s gonna sing soprano if I let go.”

  Flippi reached for him and Huyen blurted out a long declaration, rapid-fire.

  “He’s never met her, only sees her as she rides up. His job is simply to occupy her targets. He was instructed not to look at her or learn her face in case he was ever captured.”

  “When does she strike next?”

  “Perhaps in a few days, ‘as conditions ripen,’ he says.”

  “Who else will aid her? How many cadre?”

  Robeson put the question to him and interpreted. “Swears he’s not included in the plan this time. Doesn’t know how many comrades will partake. Those who participate in an action only ever learn their own parts. Their orders come only from her. Nothing is shared between the other comrades.”

  I didn’t believe him. “Where do you assemble before an attack?”

  Words tumbled out. Robeson summarized.

  “They rendezvous at the site only on the actual day. Instructions about where and when arrive just minutes before, so they must rush to get in position.” I doubted that, too. He’d been her spotter. He’d have known all the attack sites well in advance.

  “How are you told the next target?”

  “A picture arrives by ordinary mail. We memorize the face and begin studying the man’s habits.”

  “Has the team received the American ambassador’s photo?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are her plans for the ambassador?”

  “Same as Diem.”

  Huyen’s face darkened as the blood settled in his head and upper torso. He looked faint.

  “What? Make him say it,” I insisted. Robeson did.

  “Assassinat,” Huyen croaked.

  “You were in the American ambassador’s villa. Why?”

  Huyen looked horrified. Was there nothing we didn’t know?

  “Scouting the premises, he says. Casing the place.”

  “Is that where they are planning to attack him?”

  Robeson shook his head no as he listened to the answer. “More likely when Lodge swims. Possibly when he walks in the street.”

  “And if Lodge changes his behavior?” I said.

  Robeson translated: “He won’t change. He will swim. He will flirt with the crowds.”

  “Did you receive pictures of President Diem?”

  “Just postcards of the palace. He says he was sent to take exterior pictures. They all know what Diem looks like.”

  “Who is to be struck first?”

  “Qui est-elle pourchasse maintenant?”

  “Le président de la République. Au palais.”

  “She’s hatching a plan to kill Diem at the palace.”

  “What about Lodge?”

  “Après Diệm.”

  “‘After Diem,’ he says.”

  I wasn’t buying half of what he was telling us. For all her skill, how could they pull off an attack on Diem in the heavily guarded palace? Huyen was blowing smoke up our asses. But I still had hopes he could lead us to Mai.

  “Why did she leave him out of the plan this time?”

  Huyen went on at length; Robeson summarized. “He says he was compromised by our attending his ceremony, and immediately dropped from the team. He’s been ordered to leave the city.”

  Bullshit. He’d been scouting Lodge’s residence, shadowing him at d’Orlandi’s place just this morning. Could we trust any of what he was saying?

  His eyes rolled up. I signaled Flip to let him down. Robeson carefully unhooked Huyen.

  “Damn,” Flip complained as he took away the blade. “If he’d only held out a little longer. I ain’t never gonna get to slice any meat.”

  He shut off the compressor and pulled me aside. “You got my note?”

  “Yeah. You found the bagman?”

  “Easy as pie. Followed him home the other night. Lives on Boulevard Norodom. Right near the Dutch Shell HQ, that big Nazi-looking building with all the columns and pedestals.”

  “Sure. Number fifteen.”

  “Right. Company housing is at number seven. There’s three white mice permanently parked, two of ’em moonlighting, the third on regular police duty.”

  “So we steer clear of the white mice in front of the apartment complex.”

  “Right. We exit the other way, past the offices, follow the bagman to the drop site.” He took me by the shoulder. “Meet me at sixteen-thirty in front of the shipping company next door to your hotel.” He slapped my shoulder and went to repack the blade in its crate. “Friday is payday, boyo.”

>   Robeson had cut the truss, freeing Huyen’s arms and the tethers on his ankles. I tossed Robeson the keys to the cuffs. Huyen collapsed into a chair. I reversed a chair and sat down facing him, my arms resting on the back. We were all drenched. Robeson filled a metal cup with water from my canteen and doused Huyen with half of it. Huyen gulped down the rest and held out the cup for more.

  “What do we do with this guy now?” Robeson said, looking at his watch.

  “Pop him and make the captain happy.”

  “Jesus, no!” Robeson exclaimed.

  “You need to stoke up beforehand?”

  Robeson shook his head. “I’m not down with that. No way. Can’t we just cut him loose?”

  “He helped ambush three of our people. His comrades killed Mama-san, tried to kill me. Don’t be stupid. The man’s hardcore. Let him go, he’ll fly straight back to her and tell her what we know. Odds are, we’re both already on the comrades’ hit list. You wanna move to the top spot?”

  “I ain’t shootin’ the man,” Robeson protested.

  I gulped down more water while I considered the options. Better him than us, I wanted to say. “Okay. I’ll tell you what. You tell him he’s gotta run for it, not go to his place, not say goodbye. Leave Saigon right now, leave Viet Nam like his commissars told him to. Hop the bus to the border. Just di di mau. Because as soon as we let him loose, we’re giving his name and picture to Colonel Tung at SEPES, and to the VBI, the CIO, Nhu’s Special Branch, the lot. If he sticks around, he’ll be a guest in one of Nhu’s spas before nightfall. Make sure he understands that.” I smiled over at Huyen. “We’ll let him cool down for a while so he don’t look so wrecked. Flippi can take him to the bus.”

  After Robeson translated, I sent him to get us more drinkable water and pulled Flippi aside. “I hate to lay this on you, but the kid won’t go along with disposing of him.”

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “Let the kid think you’re taking Huyen to the bus and, you know, take care of him, quiet like.”

  “No problemo, boss. I’m happy sending any of them to their ancestors. Tell your captain I’m available, always. You know, like Paladin on TV.” He dropped his voice low like an announcer’s. “Have portable guillotine, will travel.”

  “Careful. I’m guessing he understands way more English than he lets on.”

  “Don’t worry. His will be a real quick trip to the workers’ paradise.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The door opened on its own when I knocked. Nadja was packing.

  “Changing rooms?”

  She shook her head. “You didn’t get my message? A car is coming for me. I’m being recalled.”

  “Because of me?”

  She shook her head again and resumed pulling clothes from the wardrobe. “One of the Polish secretaries went missing,” she said. “Turned up in Hong Kong with her Canadian swain. They’d gotten married. She’s defecting.”

  “That’s not your fault.”

  “If someone slips out of the collective grasp, the fault is assumed to be mine.”

  “You in big trouble?”

  “I’m being posted to Tallinn.”

  “Where the hell’s that?”

  “The Soviet Republic of Estonia. On the Baltic Sea.”

  “Behind the Iron Curtain,” I said.

  “Pretty town. Lots of black bread. Blood sausage at Christmas.”

  She laid the folded blouses in her suitcase and sat down on the bed. I joined her.

  “Maybe it’s better that it happened,” she said, “before we got involved.” She leaned her head against my shoulder.

  Hell, I thought we were involved. The weight of my disappointment surprised me. Not that I’d been ready to offer marriage and sanctuary, like the Canadian groom had done. Pretty sure she would have said no if I had.

  Nadja stroked my arm. “We were never going to be allowed a private peace in this backwater war. I told you—one side or the other would have put an end to us soon enough.” She touched my cheek.

  “I haven’t much by way of a parting gift,” she said. “Just a little something. Seek out a Mr. Ma Tuyen in Cholon. He can help you.”

  “Who is this guy?”

  “He’s the unofficial mayor of the Chinese district. A businessman, an exporter. Among many other things.”

  I kissed her deeply, feeling passion and pain well up. “Stay,” I said. “Let’s make a run for the border. Phnom Penh? Vientiane?”

  She smiled indulgently as if I was a child proposing something adorable and absurd, a picnic on the moon.

  I called Rider to let him know we needed to locate Mr. Ma Tuyen for a sit-down, then headed to meet Robeson at Cheap Charlie’s. Coup gossip over breakfast was at fever pitch. Everybody agreed mutiny was near. Who would launch the challenge? was the only question. I half-listened and concentrated on my sautéed asparagus and poached egg while Robeson and Blue concentrated on one another. Now that Nadja had checked out of the Majestic and out of my life, their mooning was the last thing I needed to see. I fed my face without enjoyment and the three of us drove over to CID. The whole city was lethargic. Nothing like the usual scramble in the streets.

  Corporal Magid called me to the telephone. Rider for me, being deliberately vague on the open line. “That person you asked me to find? There’s a guy says he can take us. Remember the place we ate overlooking the water? See you there in fifteen.”

  I gathered up Robeson. We parked the jeep in care of the street kids at the Majestic and walked a few blocks south to the Nautique, a sad little yacht club that happened to have a first-class restaurant with a waterside dining patio overlooking the Chinese Canal where it joined the Saigon River.

  I spotted Rider’s white-wall haircut with a little tuft of sun-bleached hair up top. He was sitting at a table beneath a flagstaff flying the club’s blue-and-white yachting pennant. We made sure we had clear sightlines before we sat down.

  Rider had ordered us three cognacs, Bisquit Dubouché. In the tiny marina below us a couple of sleek sailboats—what passed for yachts at Saigon’s yacht club—bobbed alongside the floating dock. A junk slid toward us, its hinged masts lying flat. Rider stood and raised a hand to shade his eyes. “Our ride’s here. Let’s go.”

  “Already?” Robeson said, his head coming out from behind the menu. “Damn. They got lamb and veal flown in from Paris.” He downed his cognac in one gulp.

  We followed Rider down the incline to the dock. At the tiller of the junk stood a thin gray-haired Eurasian in a creamy white shirt open at the collar. He was barefoot, his pant legs rolled up.

  “I have been asked to bring you to my employer,” he said.

  The junk nudged the dock’s rubber-tire bumpers on the starboard side. Robeson and I stepped across the gap, Rider close behind us. The lone Chinese deckhand pushed us off. We pulled away under power, the diesel engine huffing black exhaust. The vessel hadn’t looked like much from shore, but up close you could see how solidly built it was, the tropical hardwoods varnished smooth. The Eurasian guided the junk west along the canal.

  He was called Stephan, he said. A precise fella, judging from his well-ordered boat and the skillful way he maneuvered the crowded waterway choked with sampans. Many of them were covered with thatched shelters, charcoal cooking fires smoking in their sterns. Wooden planks, perched between the sampans like sidewalks, clacked as we passed.

  Shacks crowded the shore too, their backs jutting out over the rank water on wooden posts. Stephan slowed the engine as we eased past the floating slums teeming with half-clad kids and their grandparents.

  We sailed beneath a bridge that smelled of mildew and wet straw. The junk slowed as we trailed a wooden barge, thirty feet wide, laden with sacks piled twice the height of a man. A rice-treatment plant oozed large, slow swirls of milky waste into the putrid water. Naked children on the ba
nks pointed and shouted at us. Smoke from distilleries and factories bit our throats. A flat-bottomed sampan slid past with two women standing in the stern, each punting with an oar. The sampan rode low in the water, loaded down with bananas, green jackfruit, and shiny orange papayas, as well as crates of live ducks, the squawking heads protruding through holes on top.

  We passed under a steel and concrete bridge, ten yards wide and long as a football field, that loomed over an island dividing the waterway. Stephan took the right channel, taking us ever deeper into Cholon.

  Vietnamese spoke of the Chinese quarter like it was a minor section of Saigon, but Cholon was a city unto itself, with a million souls crowding its dark alleys and neon-lit streets. Cholon was where Saigonese went for meals, gambling, assignations and other earthly pleasures; a haven for secret societies, the most private clubs, and the Viet Cong.

  Stephan expertly swung the prow, easing the junk to a stop against a pier where sampans were giving up their cargo. The air was filled with the sweaty sour smell of ninety-pound men humping hundred-pound sacks of rice, coffee beans, and tea. Stephan led us from the waterfront onto a street teeming with bicycle rickshaws. I hoped he would hail some for us, but he pressed forward on foot. Buildings six feet across and one or two stories high butted one against the other for blocks. Their fronts, open to the street, were businesses where artisans and merchants plied their trades: hammering tin, butchering meat, treadling sewing machines, dispensing herbal remedies. Home was at the back or on the second floor. The few three-story buildings had verandahs at the top.

  We passed through a street of tile shops, then stores filled with elaborate baskets nested one inside the other. Over an open storefront a single neon Chinese character glowed lucky red, tinting the white marble counters of the butcher shop and the cooked fowl hanging alongside strips of dried pork. A thick wooden chopping block was getting a good workout as civet cats paced a wire cage, waiting for their starring role in somebody’s dinner.