by AD Davies
“What truth?”
“That America wanted a base in South East Asia. They failed to get a foothold in Korea because the South insisted on ruling themselves. When the Party flocked south in Vietnam, it was the perfect excuse. It was the same with the French, here and in Cambodia. But we repelled them before, and we repelled the Americans after.”
“Repelled. Big word for a guy born and bred in a third-world country.”
His yellow smile spread again. “You were raised in a corrupt system. You call us third-world because iPhones and flat screen TVs are still new to us. Your system is full of wealth and technology, but it feeds lies to its young, and glorifies the rare American victories during the war. But me, I spoke fluent English by the time I was fourteen. When I was fifteen, I fired an M-16 for the first time. Killed three men two weeks after my sixteenth birthday, three good men who wanted to free Vietnam from tyranny. Did you know, ninety per cent of Americans believe they won the war?”
“I don’t think it’s that many.” I turned away from the images of napalm victims. “Are things really better under communism?”
“Not at first. The US licked their wounds and, like bitter children, they imposed sanctions. But look at Vietnam now. Since Mr. Clinton lifted those sanctions, and allowed us to play by the same rules as everyone else, we have grown strong. Soon we will be like China. The Vietnamese Lion will roar.”
I didn’t know enough to argue, quite frankly. I understood communist principles in an abstract sense—you don’t smoke as much dope on as many beaches as I did without getting into the odd discussion or two—but in practice it comes down to the people running the show. Communism didn’t work due to human nature. We believe that the person running the factory deserves better remuneration than the person sweeping the factory floor. Unless you are the person holding the broom, of course.
“The credit card,” I said. “Where did you get it?”
Giang produced a small box with a wire antenna. Raised his eyebrows expectantly. I lifted my arms to the side and he swept my body, the box beeping slowly. It squealed when it detected my phone, which I handed over, and he completed the check to his satisfaction.
“I will require compensation,” he said. “How much shall we say?”
“I probably don’t have to pay at all, but let’s call it a show of good faith.” I gave him an envelope stuffed with large bills. “I’m on a tight schedule. We’ll say two hundred dollars cash for the information or I go to your superiors.”
Both sides “winning.”
Giang pretended to consider it, then took the envelope. “Let us walk.”
So we strolled the museum. Giang insisted on giving me his version of the conflict whenever we were near other people. When we found the section dedicated to prisoners of war, a school trip streamed by, and when Giang showed his police ID, the boys’ and girls’ faces lit up like they’d met a pop star. He smiled and ruffled some heads, and when they moved on, he asked me if I had any children.
“No,” I said. I was tempted to add the laddish joke, “none that I know of,” but it was hardly appropriate.
“I have five,” he said. “Two boys, three girls. The girls sleep in one bedroom, the boys in another. My wife and I pull the sofa out at night.”
“While you drink champagne and buy rounds for your friends. And judging by that thing on your lip, romancing of a lot of women who aren’t your wife.”
“I do not spend all the money on myself. I wish to send my oldest boy to university in your country, once I have educated him in its propaganda. I do not think all my children will go, but one is enough. He will get a good job and buy us a bigger house.”
Giang stopped to point out a black and white photo of an emaciated North Vietnamese soldier, nude in the bottom of a pit, being urinated on by four GIs, one of whom was smoking a cigar. He said, “This is what the west did to Vietnam for too many years. If I can improve my life by taking something from a western bank or British criminal, I will do that.”
“You got it from a criminal. This guy?” I showed him the photo of Gareth.
“The man in your photo looks very much like him.”
“Tell me what happened,” I said. “Everything.”
And he did.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Gareth Delingpole, or Joseph Coulet as he was known on his passport, arrived in Saigon three weeks ago with his young lover, a woman who went by Isabella. They stayed at a low-key place called the Saigon Backpacker Hotel, paid cash, and relinquished their passports. However, due to the discrepancy between the stated nationality and the language they spoke, those passports were flagged upon arrival by the People’s Security Service, Vietnam’s answer to MI5 or the FBI.
Thiếu tá Công an Lanh Giang, or “Major” Lanh Giang, as the official title translated, worked for the Vietnam People’s Police Service, who tackle local matters, so when the flag flashed through to the switchboard, it was Major Giang’s duty to take action. He immediately set up surveillance on the western couple, who dined on cocktails and in fancy-pants restaurants, who held hands and kissed in public, who laughed with each other and their fellow westerners. Alone, the man read car magazines, while the girl sketched incredible pictures of the city. Always, though, the man flashed a credit card around like it was a magic money generator. The major sent in a rare female officer to discreetly check the card as the waiter processed it, and saw it was registered to a Mr. Gallway, not M. Coulet, which confirmed the suspect was an illegal immigrant. This, in turn, meant a significant conflict of interest for Lanh Giang.
Some years ago, Lanh Giang and his team—before his promotion to major—raided a packed, steamy factory cobbling together fake designer handbags. He became separated from the group, and found himself in an undocumented extension that led to a tunnel tucked away through which the senior factory-masters could escape. The factory owner himself was ducking into the tunnel, ready to escape, but the fleeing man gestured to the desk, upon which sat a small pile of cash.
With another baby on the way, Giang’s hesitation, his temptation, turned to need. The factory owner vanished and so did the pile of cash. Giang was promoted to Major, and all seemed well, until the factory boss reappeared a year later.
He had since extended his reach beyond Vietnam’s borders, and traded workers with colleagues in Thailand and Cambodia and China, exporting individuals with electronic aptitude in return for those skilled in needlecraft. That, inevitably, progressed to the sex trade and an increase in the boss-man’s profile. He mostly sent girls away to Russia, Western Europe, Britain, and France. He was behind a “Thai Brides” website that shipped sixteen-year-old Vietnamese peasants to lonely men willing to pay a handsome sum, sent domestic slaves to the Middle East, and supplied sex workers and strippers to international “businessmen.”
People like Curtis Benson and Vila Fanuco.
The now-rising criminal possessed a recording. Grainy phone footage, taken whilst the lens poked out of his pocket, revealed Giang’s choice, and threatened to end his freedom, and crush any hope of his children leading a better life than him.
So Major Lanh Giang did as he was told. He passed information, made nice, worked hard. His career flourished and his family was left alone. Then the first “perk” came his way.
After liberating evidence from a locker in the police station, and doctoring the paperwork to blame a new recruit, he passed on the incriminating garment to an intermediary in a dark, smoke-filled bar with more strippers than patrons. Whilst waiting for the all-clear from the man in charge, he was taken to a back room where a beautiful young woman unzipped his fly and—once his fake resistance gave out—showed him a glimpse of the finer side of life.
It all unraveled from there.
The next time he did a favor for these people, the reward went further. He still loved his wife, of course, but these girls … they became a semi-regular pastime. Money came in the form of small bills, quantities that made a huge difference to his life, and
his university savings fund. These girls, this money, it was symbolic of the new, global Vietnam, the country they all loved so fiercely.
So, when Giang ascertained the People’s Security Service’s suspect was an illegal immigrant, his first call was to the man who thanked him for the information, but told him firmly that they knew all about the couple, and ordered him to back off. More difficult, though, the man also instructed Giang to make the Security Service back off too.
To fulfil these orders, he made himself look incompetent. He signed off on an operation that saw officers raid the Saigon Backpacker Hotel. As ordered, he took the foreigners’ belongings himself, and logged only a couple of items into evidence. He apologized to his superiors for the error, citing his enthusiasm to impress the People’s Security Service as his excuse. He would later face a disciplinary hearing and be fined a week’s wages.
When Gareth and Sarah returned to the vicinity of the hotel, it was Giang himself who approached, and told them they could not go back.
The three of them travelled to The Rex. Gareth waited in the bar with Sarah, drinking beer and Diet Coke, Sarah raising and lowering the soft drink with a mechanical alertness, not touching Gareth, looking at everything around the place, everything except her boyfriend. When they were called to the penthouse, they got as far as the lift when Sarah made a dash for the door.
Giang grabbed her and squeezed her arms until she stopped struggling, and shoved her into the elevator car. He had no idea what awaited her, but he was now more involved than ever, so he dared not screw up.
The penthouse was sparse but clean, with a view over the city that ended a half-mile away due to the brown haze that hangs over the buildings all day, every day. The man who greeted them was not the boss who held Giang’s life so tightly, but a lieutenant who rarely got his hands dirty, relying instead on his two cousins, trucked in from the hills to aid his business.
Gareth said, “She’s here.”
To Giang’s surprise, it was clear Gareth knew these men, and had been expecting this meeting.
“Is that my stuff?” Sarah asked, pointing at the bags Giang unloaded that morning.
Gareth looked curious too.
The lieutenant told Giang, “The client chooses what things they keep. Sometimes, it makes the transition easier. Less panic if they have familiar clothes and shoes. Or if they have valuable items, the new owner keeps them.”
He then indicated one of his cousins should pay the Englishman. A briefcase came out and the cousin laid it on the bed. He released the catches and opened the lid.
Gareth’s mouth curled into a smile.
“Ten million?” he said.
“As agreed,” said the boss.
Gareth fanned one of the packs of money.
Sarah watched, eyes darting around the room, trying to take it all in. Numbly, she asked, “What is this? Why are we here?”
Gareth just said, “Sorry,” and closed the briefcase.
The two men flanked Sarah, and one of the cousins yanked her wrists behind her back, and the other injected her in the neck with something that made her unconscious in seconds.
Gareth said, “You won’t hurt her?”
“No longer your concern,” the man in charge replied.
Giang was ordered to escort the Englishman out. In the corridor, he asked Gareth why he sold the girl, who clearly had a lot of affection for him.
Gareth shrugged. “She was gonna ditch me as soon as she could. One night in Paris, she came back late and drunk. I knew she’d shagged someone in the toilets or some alleyway. Besides, I need the cash.”
Giang was not a bad man. At least, he didn’t think so. He played a system that others would exploit whether he did so or not. But now he had stepped beyond that, directly assisting a terrible crime. So he took great pleasure in telling Gareth that he was holding ten million dong in that case.
Gareth said, “Yeah, so?”
Giang waited for the doors and composed himself. He told Gareth, “Ten million dong is less than five hundred dollars.”
Gareth said, “Piss off,” and chuckled as if Giang was going to join in. When he didn’t, Gareth said, “Take me back up there now.”
Giang didn’t move. “When you made your deal, what was the choice?”
“The guy in Paris, he said ten thousand US or ten million Vietnamese. Come on. I want the dollars.”
“Mister,” Giang said calmly. “You made a deal with a man who wants to take your girlfriend away. Do you really think they will say ‘Fine, no problem?’ No. If you cause trouble for them, they will kill you. They will take back their ten million dong from your corpse and spend it on pizza and beer.”
But Gareth’s blood was up, and he swung the case at Giang, made a charge for the penthouse. Giang pistol-whipped the Englishman and dragged him into the lift, sat on him all the way down, and frog-marched him out of the hotel, flashing his ID as he went. He drove Gareth, bleeding in the backseat, out of the city, and left him on a dusty road next to a motel that Vietnamese used when visiting Saigon. He told the foreigner to stay there two nights, then leave.
That was two weeks ago. Giang did everything in his power to save the man’s life.
Last Monday, a corpse was discovered on a rubbish tip in the east of the city. Giang caught the case purely by luck, and found a Caucasian male with a shotgun blast to the chest, which took off half his jaw. He carried no ID except a credit card in the name of Gallway. What remained of his face, his build, and the fact that he was still gripping a briefcase containing ten million dong, led Giang to identify the body as the illegal immigrant the People’s Security Service were looking for. He remained in a morgue, unclaimed.
Giang even took a photograph on his phone. It was low-res, the flesh raw and brown, but it was detailed enough for me to see his face, and accept the truth.
Gareth Delingpole was dead.
Chapter Thirty-Four
During the tour of the museum, Giang had bought us ice creams. I was finishing mine as we emerged onto the street. He got to the top of the cone, and dumped the rest in a bin.
“You think that’s okay?” I said. “Selling foreign girls to slave-traders?”
“It is supply and demand. If they did not supply, the demand would remain and someone else would help them. It is not my business.”
“This guy, Gareth, his body had nothing else? No USB drive?”
“Nothing that I saw. I had no interest in him beyond what I told you.”
So Gareth Delingpole saw the opportunity to make some money, and since he viewed his wives and girlfriends as his property, he would believe he was justified in selling Sarah.
Death by shotgun blast was a light punishment compared to what I wanted to do to him.
Back in France, when Gareth was seeking to procure documents, Sammy must have tipped off the Man in Tan, who made his approach to Gareth and negotiated a price for Sarah. He then flew them both here for the final trade-off. The flagging of the passports meant the gang could not move in immediately, so Gareth—and Giang—spent a fair bit on the credit card in the intervening days.
Despite understanding how Sarah fell off the radar, and confirming that she was alive, I was no closer to tracing her. All I had achieved was solve a credit card theft.
And yet, if Gareth needed the money that badly, I had to ask, what happened to the cash stolen from Curtis Benson? Was that all engineered to hide the theft of incriminating data? Data that was now, presumably, in the hands of Sarah’s new owner. If he could not decrypt the data stick, the item was useless, so it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility he could have thrown it away, or simply reformatted it and filled it with a pirated season of Game of Thrones to watch later.
I said, “Take me to the people who bought Sarah.”
“Do you really think I’m going to say yes to that?”
“If I buy her from them—”
“She already had a buyer.”
“Then I’ll pay that buyer for her. I need
you to make that offer. Supply and demand. I have the demand, they can supply her.”
“They will not do it. If I suggest it to them, my position will be … compromised.”
I crouched as my stomach turned at the thought of losing her after being so close. Heat blew back off the pavement. I touched it.
Hot, so hot.
I stood, a plan forming. A stupid plan, but a plan nonetheless. It worked with Sammy LeHavre and the forger.
“If you took them a customer,” I said, “you’ll get a finder’s fee, correct?”
“Yes.”
“So take me. I’m a foreign pervert looking for a young girl, a companion. I want to see her before I buy, and I’ll pay top dollar. Or top dong, if they prefer.”
I lost targets before, never to be seen again. I failed in my job on those occasions, and of course I still replayed events in my head, scenarios I could have conducted differently, but ultimately I always moved on. This was different. Perhaps it was the scope of the crime, a vast net cast over young women all over the world. Maybe, if I could save even one, it would put hope out there that not all was lost for the others.
Giang said, “How much will you pay me?”
“A thousand now, a thousand when we get back. US dollars, of course.”
Giang made that face again, the one that pretended to be considering it, then nodded. “I will come to Notre Dame close to your hotel.”
“Did you say Notre Dame?”
“Yes, on corner of Le Duan. Like the one in Paris. But better.”
Saigon had a Notre Dame of its own. Who knew?
“Be ready,” he said. “The day will be hot, and you may get wet.”
I bought some watertight Ziploc bags, then walked into a bank and, over the counter, withdrew a serious amount of cash. I had to present my genuine passport and banking credentials. In one of the Ziplocs, I placed a thousand dollars, and in another I secured a further twenty thousand in large bills, the amount Giang estimated I would need to put down as a deposit on any girl I decided to buy. Twenty-thousand could possibly even get me a scrawny kid all-in, but a pretty western girl like Sarah, I’d be looking at a couple of hundred at least, which I would pay “on delivery.”