The whole city seemed silent, and the streets were half empty. Out on the square, some military trucks went by, and a few refugees still trudged through the streets with their possessions. But there were no ARVN troops; no black market operators; no Saigon Cowboys on Hondas; no White Mice. The blue haze of exhaust fumes was dissolving, and the air was almost clean. After the din and fear of the day before, waking to this silence had been like waking from a fever to find yourself well. Saigon was waiting for the victors to arrive.
Sure is peaceful, Ed said. I can handle plenty of this. The only thing is: who’s in charge?
No one’s in charge, Mike told him. I never thought I’d miss those little White Mice—but not having them around’s a bit creepy.
We laughed, and Ed signaled for more coffee. One of the old Chinese waiters came shuffling forward, carrying the tall silver coffee pot. He had a dignified expression, but I detected a faint frown of worry. I wondered what would become of him after today. He’d probably been at the Continental for forty years: could he even understand what was happening?
We began to discuss where we should position ourselves, to be ready for the NVA’s arrival. No one could know when that would be, or where they’d head for first when they came into the city.
Right here in the middle of town seems best to me, Ed said. We might as well make ourselves comfortable. I don’t want any dealings with the South Vietnamese Army, either: they’re pretty mad at Americans today. Yesterday on the sidewalk an ARVN sergeant spat at me, and told me we were running out on them. I told him I was staying, and then he shook my hand. They’re feeling pretty emotional.
Can you blame them? Mike asked. His face grew set and bitter, and Ed looked at him.
I guess not, he said.
We were quiet for a moment; then Ed said: The NVA are going to want to hoist their flag somewhere significant, when they come into town. Maybe at the Palace. I guess Big Minh’s sitting in his office out there, waiting to surrender. But my bet is they’ll go just around the corner here, to City Hall.
You take City Hall, Mike told Ed. Jim and I will go to the Palace. And twenty dollars says we’re right.
We shook hands on it, and Mike grinned. He still had a little of his old spirit; but he seldom smiled. His mind was always on Ly Keang.
So he and I went to the Presidential Palace, driving the Mustang again, which had survived the night in the Continental without being stolen.
It was now eleven-thirty, and the sun was growing hot. The streets were still very quiet, and out by the Palace it was quieter still. The big wrought-iron gates in front were locked as usual, and we drove down a side street to the service entrance, where journalists had always entered in the past. This gate was open, and there was no sign of the guards who used to be posted there. We walked into the grounds and around to the front of the long white building with its flight of marble steps going up to the entrance.
Here we found an even bigger quiet than the one in the city. The Palace stands in a wide parkland enclosed by iron railings, where spreading tamarinds and other trees stand in open, grassy spaces. These spaces were empty, all the way to the road and the railings a hundred meters or so away, and the quiet here was like sleep. Nothing but bird calls, and the whirring of cicadas. There seemed to be an unusual number of dragonflies in the air, hovering and shimmering, and I wondered what this signified. They must be a sign, I thought. But of what? I guess I’m superstitious; and I was now very keyed up.
The only people we found at the entrance of the Palace were some South Vietnamese troops: members of the palace guard. They were sitting and lying on the grass near the marble steps in a way that was very unmilitary, their automatic rifles stacked beside them, many of them with their helmets off. It looked almost like a picnic.
They no longer consider themselves soldiers, I thought. It’s over for them.
When we went up to them, we spoke to them in Vietnamese. I was concerned they might be hostile to us, like those Ed Carter had encountered, but they smiled back, and were quite friendly. Most of them were young, but there was a sergeant of middle age.
What are you doing? I asked.
Waiting to surrender, the sergeant said. Nothing more to do, now.
I guess that’s right, Mike said, and offered him a cigarette.
We sat down in the grass, and talked with them. Many ARVN troops had thrown away their uniforms today, they told us; but they thought it better to go on guarding the Palace until they were told to do otherwise. They wanted to do their duty. Then they would surrender their weapons.
It was very still, and getting much hotter; soon we spoke only in snatches, lying there in the grass. The whirring of the insects began to sound to me like some mechanical alarm system, warning us of what was to come.
Then I saw the tank.
I could not believe what I was seeing, at first. I don’t know what I’d expected, but it hadn’t been this; I squinted at it through the shimmer of the heat for a number of seconds, before I called out to Mike. It was a green, Soviet-made tank, and it was moving down the road outside the railings. It flew a huge National Liberation Front flag on a pole—blue and red, with a yellow star—and the number on the side of it was 843. A North Vietnamese trooper was looking out from its turret; others, in their sun helmets and familiar green cotton uniforms, were riding on the front. I glimpsed people running behind it; one of them was a British correspondent, and I recognized some French correspondents and photographers. As we watched, flame shot from the barrel of its cannon and there was a report; then it turned towards the closed Palace gates, and Mike and I stood up. The soldiers were standing up too, and raising their hands.
The tank smashed into the gates, and one of them came half off its hinges. Mike ran towards it across the lawn, his Leica at the ready. I had my CP16 Commag, a sound-on-film camera: I hoisted it onto my shoulder and started after him.
The tank stopped, like a big slow animal, and seemed to consider; then it reversed and charged the gates again, and I saw Mike raise his camera. This time the tank smashed straight through the gates and rolled on, lumbering across the lawn. I was still running, the camera slowing me down. I was checking my light meter as I went, my face pouring with sweat, my heart pounding. I knew only one thing: this was film I must get no matter what happened to me.
Mike was still taking pictures when the tank stopped again. Some of the soldiers were pointing at us, and beginning to climb down, and I became aware that Mike and I were alone in this space of grass; none of the palace guard had followed us. But I was shooting film now; everything else was vague: the drilling of the cicadas inside my head, the dragonflies dancing around me. Looking at the soldiers through the lens, I was seeing their faces clearly, and they suddenly seemed very familiar to me. They were very young, mostly just boys, and they reminded me of Captain Danh’s unit; I almost thought I recognized Doc and Weary and Prince among them, but of course I didn’t. And in that instant, I saw a soldier in a sun helmet running towards us and shouting, his AK-47 cocked. He was telling us to put our hands up.
He reached Mike first, and Mike raised his hands, his camera held in the right. I did the same: it took all my strength to suspend that heavy Commag. The soldier was standing close to Mike, the AK leveled, shouting in Vietnamese.
American! he shouted. You are American!
He had a broad brown country face, and his eyes had a fierce, hard shine: the killing shine.
Mike answered in Vietnamese, his hands still high. No, he said. Australian. Welcome to Saigon.
The soldier frowned and looked puzzled; then I saw the shine go out of his eyes. He lowered his gun, and I knew we were going to live.
4.
Now Langford begins to disappear.
There’s only one more cassette in his audio diary collection. It has four dated entries on it—all of them recorded in Saigon in that April. These would seem to be the last diary passages he recorded.
After the city’s fall, he went to Bangkok w
ith Jim Feng, and stayed for a time with Jim and Lu Ying in their apartment there, before renting a place of his own. There are no tape-recorded entries for the year that followed in Bangkok, before his disappearance—or if he did make any tapes, he didn’t put them among the ones he left with Jim. But my guess is that these Saigon entries are truly the last, and that with his exile from Phnom Penh and the disappearance of Ly Keang, he no longer had the heart to keep a diary.
The Saigon entries are verbal jottings, like messages scribbled hastily on a pad. They’re not easy passages to listen to.
AUDIO DIARY: LANGFORD
TAPE 72, APRIL 10TH, 1975
—At the Continental: 10 A.M. Got in half an hour ago, with Jim and Harvey. All the signs are that Saigon will go soon, and I have to get to Claudine.
—Tried to explain this to Ly Keang last night, but for a while she wouldn’t see it. We quarreled. I’ve never seen her angry like that before.
—She stood in front of me in the apartment with clenched fists. Why must you go to Vietnam? she said. Why, when everything here is worse every day? This is where you should be, she said, not Saigon.
—It’ll hold here a while longer, I said. But Vietnann’s going fast. The end could come any day now, and I might never get back there. I’ll only be gone forty-eight hours. I spent a lot of my life covering that war, I said. I want to get some pictures at the end. My magazine expects it.
—She was staring at me, knowing this wasn’t all there was; so I told her.
—I also have to see Claudine Phan, I said. I have to get her out with the Americans: she and her sons. I can do it; I’ve got the contacts. She’ll be shot or imprisoned if she stays: nothing’s more certain.
—That woman! she said. I knew it was that bloody French Vietnamese. Well, go to your Vietnamese, she said. Go to Vietnam, that enemy country. You won’t find me here when you come back.
—And she ran out of the apartment, and down the stairs.
—I followed after a few moments, but she’d already disappeared. I looked through the Old Market, but I couldn’t find her there. Felt as if I’d swallowed a load of lead.
—Went back to the apartment and sat on the balcony as dark fell. Every minute that she didn’t reappear was a minute I couldn’t bear. An hour went by and she didn’t come. I sat drinking cognac.
—At eight o‘clock, I stood up, deciding to search for her: at her uncle’s house, then all through the city, if I had to. I’d cancel going to Saigon.
—How has this happened to me? Without her, there’s no life. I want her jokes, I want her anger, I want the way we talk together. I want everything that she is.
—I walked out the door, and met her coming up the stairs. She was carrying a small brown paper package, and looked at me with an expression of alarm. This alarmed look was half comical, half apologetic: more excitiing than a smile or a look of tenderness would have been. She threw her arms around my neck, and I backed inside the door, dragging her. We said nothing until we’d made love.
—Then she said that she’d behaved badly. I’m jealous, she said. Also, I’m prejudiced against Vietnamese. We all are, she said: all Cambodians. They are always our enemies, and never to be trusted. This isn’t rational, I know, but I feel betrayed when you go there now. Now that we are almost lost, I want you only to care about Cambodia and me. know you don’t love that old aunty; I know that. You only want to save her; you want to save everyone. So go and do it, she said. But please come back quickly.
—Only two days, I said. And I told her I’d grab a Right back if there was any change. If there’s any sign of trouble, I said, get in touch with Aubrey Hardwick. He’s still in town; he’ll help you.
—And I gave her the address of the Frenchman whose villa Aubrey was staying in.
—When I come back, I said, you and I are going across into Thailand. If commercial flights stop, we’ll get out with the Americans.
—Yes, she said, and we’ll take Sary, won’t we? We’ll get a villa on the border, not far from Battambang, and marry and make a home. We’ll help the Khmer Serei, she said, and live there until Cambodia’s free again.
—This was a story we told each other: half a game, half something we believed.
—The brown paper package was lying beside us on the bed, and she handed it to me. I brought you a present, she said.
—As I unwrapped it, the package made a crying noise. It turned out to be a small, furry toy cat with orange stripes, made in Japan. It mewed when you tipped it up. We both started laughing. She buys a lot of silly presents for me like that: the apartment’s full of them.
—Take it to Saigon, she said. A mascot. It will protect you; I’ve told it to. I have Sary to look after me here.
APRIL 12TH
—Phnom Penh fallen: the Americans gone. No commercial or military flights. Tried to charter a plane. None available.
—Can’t raise Ly Keang’s number at home; nor the one at her newspaper.
—Phoned Aubrey at his friend’s villa: no answer. The phone system between here and Phnom Penh was always bad: easier to phone New York from the Hotel Royal than to phone Saigon. Now it seems to have broken down completely. The switch at the Royal doesn’t answer; no proper ring at my apartment or Vora’s; none at Ly Keang’s uncle’s house.
-Christ. It’s like a wall.
APRIL 13TH
—Tried all day to charter a flight to Phnom Penh. Impossible.
—One AP man is still there: a Cambodian, still sending wires. He tells AP on the telex that nothing’s happening in the city: the Khmer Rouge still haven’t arrived.
—Ed Carter asked him to contact Ly Keang for me. But he sent a message back that he can’t find her.
APRIL 14TH
—Stitt can’t charter a plane. Still can’t make telephone contact with Ly Keang.
—She must surely have gone to Aubrey, as I asked her to. I’ve been trying to find out where Aubrey is, without success; today I rang the PR business in Bangkok. Donald Mills answered. He said that Aubrey went to Europe immediately on coming out of Phnom Penh: he rode a chopper out with the U.S. embassy staff. But Mills told me that Aubrey said that he didn’t see Ly Keang at all, in the period after I left: not even on the day the U.S. embassy pulled out.
—I could try to go over the border, but I know my chances of reaching Phnom Penh would be nil.
APRIL 22ND
—Midnight. Sitting in my room at the Continental. Can’t sleep. Everything ending here too: it can’t be more than a week before the South surrenders. When Indochina’s gone, and the war’s finally over, what’s going to happen to my life? And if I can’t find Ly Keang?
—Just went to look for cigarettes in my overnight bag. Found the toy cat that she gave me. When I picked it up, the sound it made was like a baby crying. Why is a silly thing like that so hard to bear?
—Littte things; always the little things. Like when the Count died: the odds and ends in his box. When Ken died: his Digger hat, hanging on the verandah. And when Mum died, the old chocolate tin I found in her wardrobe: inside, baby photos of all of us, and an invitation to a ball in Hobart, before she was married. Miss I. Olsen. Nothing else: she left nothing else. Why did she keep that invitation? Was that her happiest night? And why were those little things all that was left of her? The invitation’s among my photographs and papers and diary tapes: a good thing I got Jim and Lu Ying to store them for me. The Khmer Rouge won’t get those. But what about Sary? She’ll be killed and eaten if she strays.
—Keang, where are you? I should never have come to Saigon.
SIX
THE BORDER
1.
The office of Pacific Consultants is in Ratchadamri Road, a block away from the square where the Newsroom stands. Hardwick and Mills no doubt chose this location because of its proximity to the foreign media offices.
My taxi gets here just after eight in the evening: the time of the appointment I’ve made with Donald Mills on the phone. I left my hotel early,
to allow for the city’s traffic jams. Darkness has set in, and a downpour’s in progress; neons and headlights are reflected in the torrents that rush across the road. I hurry from the curb to the shelter of a glass-and-concrete cube called the Raja Damri Building: the name is fixed on the awning in heavy metal letters. But the office proves difficult to find.
It isn’t included in the golden list of firms lettered in English and Thai on the glass doors, and I run down a lane at the side, the rain soaking my shirt, to find myself in a square that smells of drains, where boys running food stalls watch me from the shelter of colored umbrellas. Finally I discover Pacific Consultants, Third Floor, lettered on a small glass door. Another sign in English says: Ancient Massage Parlor, Second Floor.
I reach the third floor in an empty lift that rocks and groans. When I get out, the automatic door booms shut in a deserted foyer with grimy white walls. Opposite me, double glass doors frame what looks like a reception area: an empty, corridor-like room with leather armchairs and potted palms, softly lit. As I prepare to knock, a man in a canary yellow shirt and white trousers appears there.
Halting to peer at me through the glass, he sways a little, and I remember Harvey’s remark about Mills’s drinking. He opens one of the doors, and stares at me with a look of bemused suspicion. His small, somewhat slanting blue eyes are empty and glazed, like ceramic chips.
“Ray Barton? Right. You’re impressively punctual,” he says.
His voice is quick and abrupt, hinting at a stammer that isn’t there, and the slurring caused by drink is just perceptible. He raises a hand to gesture me inside; once I’m through, he swings the glass door shut with some force. The crash makes me jump, and I turn to stare at him. He’s grinning at the door, rocking on his feet. “Always forget that it’s not a swinging door,” he says. Then he puts out his hand, gripping mine with athletic vigor.
Highways to a War Page 49