by Jeff Wallace
“Stay with you?”
“I apologize for my abruptness, but if I don’t speak now...” For the first time her old commander appeared unsure of himself. “I want you to stay with me as my wife. All these years I have thought of you, hoping to see you again. In my enthusiasm for the resistance, I have risked much, and I regret what I have sacrificed, for Lien to be killed, and you to be sent away. It is my wish that you should not be lost to me anymore.”
She found her answer as if she had prepared it, as when she’d encountered him years ago on the trail. “What I want is to live a normal life. Whoever marries you can only be wed to the resistance.”
She expected to hear another of his patriotic speeches. He merely said, “I will arrange for you to be transferred to my command. Once this is done, you will be a civilian again.”
He kept his word. Deactivated from the cadres, she moved into a village close to the place where she had lived as a child, in an area he controlled. Few of her relatives remained; the rest had fled or were in prison, arrested during President Diem’s anti-communist campaigns. Diu and Khiêm were married in a small ceremony in the shade of mahogany trees. In the distance, like wedding fireworks, artillery thumped from cannons the Americans had supplied to the South Vietnamese.
She tried at first to keep herself away from the work of the resistance. As was perhaps inevitable, she began to help them in modest ways, mending their torn packs or caring for wounded or sick soldiers. More importantly, she assumed the role of trusted advisor to her husband. Marriage with Khiêm meant abiding with his bravura, repeating his slogans in the presence of others, and, in private, critiquing his ruthless schemes. She felt like an idolater before a deity that oozed blood. Having internalized discipline in the cause, admiring the resolve of those who struggled year after year for a united Vietnam, she found herself under the coolie pole of its relentless stress, which she thought was the reason she never was able to conceive a child.
Savagely Khiêm fought the war of national liberation. Among his enemies was Simone, whose plantation he attacked with the same earnestness he had shown during their card match in the garden. When he came home, he described his actions, which were calculated to make the plantation untenable. He scared away the workers, mined the road, burned the outlying facilities. He availed himself of the weapon of terror. If he heard that a Vietnamese outpost guard had fired his rifle at the guerrillas, his men would cut off the guard’s hands. If he learned of a village chief who spoke favorably of the plantation’s masters or Diem’s government, he had the chief murdered. Within a year, he had achieved progress. News arrived that Simone was selling her property to other Frenchmen, no doubt fools who had more money than sense.
One steamy evening, Khiêm returned home, and she saw that the creases in his face had deepened to canyons of frustration. He announced, “The French wish to pay us to stop attacking them.”
“So? What does their money mean to us?”
“The Command thinks we should compromise.”
They sat quietly for a time. The failing light played off the rough teakwood beams that held up their roof. The sky was purple, bisected by palm trees that outlined rectangles like huge windows. She said, “We spilled our blood at Dien Bien Phu. How can the French be allowed to keep their lands? Do idiots command the resistance these days?”
His eyes beamed rebuke. “The Americans are the problem now. The French are harmless. Resources devoted to them are wasted. The plantation’s new owners claim they have no interest in politics. They wish simply to tend their business. They agree to pay us taxes in secret. It is the best way.”
“You believe this?”
“It is not important what I believe. They wish to meet with us to negotiate the amount of the taxes. I have been ordered to send an emissary who speaks good French.” He pressed his fists against his eyes. Schooled in the wisdom of the movement, Khiêm lacked a way to adapt when it went awry. She felt pity and anger spinning together like the threads from two spools. She never thought she knew the resistance well, but in this minute she understood how it worked, the exchange of a greater evil for a lesser one, a fine bargain as long as the calculations were exact.
“I will go,” she said.
He nodded. It seemed this had been his wish all along.
They discussed what she should say.
* * *
The meeting was timed for the hour of dusk, at the easternmost grove where the plantation’s road blended into a jungle trail. She was familiar with this corner; she had broken her ankle here many years ago. To one side lay a peasant’s graveyard where the stone markers sketched rows on a gentle slope, as if the dead were in attendance at an amphitheater. The beams from the perimeter lights spread like the arms of ghosts.
Khiêm had briefed her thoroughly. The plantation’s new owner was Leon Gavet, a pragmatic Frenchmen who cared only for his profits. He was willing to pay the cadres in exchange for peace, the exact sum to be negotiated. Gavet or his deputy might show up. Gavet was tall and fat, the deputy, Cecil Cocteau, short and fat. Cecil had an easygoing manner, therefore he was the more formidable in negotiations. Both were clever. She had no idea how the resistance had obtained its information about Leon and Cecil.
It did not matter, for neither one appeared.
From the white car that halted at the edge of the grove stepped Simone Nogaret.
Diu marveled at the tall woman who approached her. Twenty-two years old, Simone strode gracefully despite the uneven ground; her bamboo-shaded hair shone like the lacquered tables that had adorned the Nogaret house. The pressed creases of her twill slacks scissored the air as she moved, and in a leather shoulder holster, a pistol’s handle nudged her left breast. Recalling the little girl who had played cards in the garden, Diu had to squeeze her jaws to keep her discipline from shattering. How odd, when she regarded Simone, the predominant emotion she felt was affection.
Simone gave neither a greeting nor a smile. She stopped, glanced around, and smacked her lips. “I came here to meet the enemy, and I find my old dressmaker instead. Somebody is having a joke at my expense.”
“You found who you expected. I am the one who must doubt your credentials.” Diu’s words leapt without forethought. Be careful what you say to her!
“What exquisite irony, for me to prove my bona fides to you.” Simone lit a cigarette. Her face was a yellow moon in the match light. “The Gavet Company asked me to negotiate with the locals I knew growing up. How literal it proved, they never could have imagined.”
Simone stepped very close. So tall and bold, her presence was incredibly intimidating, and the urge rushed Diu to step backwards, the way a servant would. All her life seemed to flow together in this moment—the march to Dien Bien Phu, the months in the jungle, the girl Mai dying in her lap—and she beseeched her ancestors for the strength to keep her feet motionless.
“So what are your demands, dear old seamstress of mine?”
“We shall have free passage of the land.” She fought to suppress the tremor in her voice. “You will pay us a percentage of your income. You will not cooperate with the government or give them information about us. If you do, we will find out, and we will hold you to account.”
“Next, you’ll have me planting mines in the road for you.” Simone’s voice was mocking and accusatory at the same time. Diu wanted to say that she had had nothing to do with the deaths of Simone’s parents, yet she knew she must not show sympathy.
“What’s the percentage?”
“Twenty.”
Simone laughed. “Don’t be absurd.”
“Thirty,” said Diu. Khiêm had instructed her to negotiate this way, for shock value. She was not sure she had it in her.
“My little dressmaker, you have no concept of money. You are bluffing. Tell your friends twenty is too high. If they wish to negotiate, they should send a cleverer bargainer. Go now.”
“You go,” said Diu. Tears and rage choked her, to be dismissed so coldly by this girl she
had tended with love. She felt the wind on her face and hoped the dark would hide her tears.
Abruptly Simone stalked off.
For the next meeting, Khiêm sent one of his lieutenants who spoke passable French. Simone did not reappear this time. Her husband André represented the plantation owners.
They agreed on twenty percent.
* * *
Folding her notes, Tuy said, “I do not think I will see her again.”
From her vivid account, I pictured Diu, the remarkable woman who had delivered such insights about Simone Nogaret. Tuy was right. Diu would disappear into the folds of the Viet Cong infrastructure; she wouldn’t risk a second meeting.
“Did Diu say anything more about André?”
“No. She never met him.”
“What happened to the land Simone’s father owned in Cambodia?”
“Diu didn’t say. I doubt she knew.”
On the western edge of the protrusion known as the Fishhook, the Nogarets’ Cambodian plantation had been an oasis of seclusion. I imagined it now, helicopters swarming over, tanks and armored personnel carriers roaring through the groves, artillery shells shearing off the fronds. If Simone still owned the land, her net worth had declined.
Easing out of her clothes, Tuy pinched out the candle and rustled under the sheets, waiting for me. But I wasn’t ready for sleep. Cross-legged on the mat, I sat thinking, listening to the rhythm of her breathing.
“Tuy?”
“What?” Her voice was groggy.
“What happened to Khiêm?”
“He died during Tet.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere in Saigon.”
In the distance, a river barge gonged in the fog.
* * *
Half a block from Simone Nogaret’s apartment building, I waited at a café table. The morning was peaceful. Birds sang in the tamarind trees. People walked hand in hand. Balconies gracefully laddered the yellow-brick facade to her sixth-floor penthouse windows where the sun-braised clouds reflected like bubbles in champagne.
Nicknamed the Pearl of the Far East, Saigon owned a few pearls of its own, and this street was one of them. A person who lived here would view the world differently than would the residents of Cholon or Tan Son Nhut. To be sure, it was the choicest cut of the colonial city, styled to remind people of Paris, and the French expatriates could blush with pride when they walked under its umbrella trees. A purely rational man does not make a good colonialist; it takes a romantic able to reconcile facts intrinsically at odds, for instance how France’s foot on Vietnam’s throat might be an enlightened gesture, and how the Vietnamese who resisted were striking at the heart of France. For the French Army to have fought to preserve the colony did not take much convincing. The military officers were the most romantic of all, they required only a hint that Saigon was an extension of their nation. Wasn’t Paris too a city on a river, a grown-up village on a marsh bend? On these streets, you needn’t stress your imagination, you could see France in the facades, smell her in the perfumeries, taste her in the patisseries and restaurants, hear her language. Even the street signs in Vietnamese bore her imprint in the Roman-alphabet transliteration a French monk had invented more than a hundred years ago.
On this street lived Simone, a woman who’d spent her life in Vietnam. This was her Saigon.
At ten hundred hours, I spotted the reporter Alton Gribley shuffling in his rubber-soled Hush Puppies and yellow linen pants. The morning heat had flushed his cheeks. When I’d phoned this morning and asked him to meet me here, he’d needed a minute to put aside his bafflement.
The waiter brought a bowl of fruit and two cold Pepsis to the table. Gribley took a grateful gulp.
“Recognize the neighborhood?” I asked.
“No. Should I?”
“You tried to get an interview with Simone Nogaret. She lives in the building behind you.”
Gribley craned over his shoulder for a glimpse, a quick one, he was discreet enough not to stare. His question came low toned, matter of fact. “So you went after the Gavet Plantation angle?”
“Yes. It turned out to be a good lead.”
From his shirt pocket, Gribley slid a pen and small notebook to his lap, below the tablecloth, where the waiter couldn’t observe.
“The dead man’s name was Gerard Penelon. He was French, a helicopter pilot.” I explained Gerard’s flight route from Vung Tau, how the chopper had gone down in the marshland known as Area Zulu.
“Penelon. Spell that.” Gribley wrote down what I told him. He said, “A Frenchman. So there’s no unknown soldier after all. The investigation must be over.”
“Closed officially, two nights ago.”
“Is MACV going to issue a statement?”
“Eventually. They’ll probably phrase it in a way to discredit your story.”
Disharmony clouded Gribley’s features. “Is that why you called me, to wring out a retraction, so you could show off how well you did for General Cobris?”
I popped a grape in my mouth. “I called because I need your help.”
“With what?”
“My investigation.”
There was no flashy display of comprehension; Gribley knew how to keep a straight face. The momentary absence of a question meant he was listening.
“Everything led here, before it was turned off.” I tipped an orange slice toward the yellow bricks. “Whatever Gerard Penelon was doing, Simone was involved. So were Cobris and his boys. Beyond that, I can’t make much sense of it, and frankly I wouldn’t give a fuck except that they’ve threatened my people. They know I’m on to them, and they’re going to transfer me out. There’s not much time.”
“Your people? Who are we talking about?”
“A Saigon cop. And a showgirl. There’s a murder contract out on the girl.”
Gribley made a notation. He was the first American I’d met who seemed to accept my loyalties to my Vietnamese friends at face value. He looked up from his pad. “What do you want from me?”
“To confirm another lead.”
His pencil scratched furiously as I explained.
* * *
In the yellow-brick building’s lobby, the concierge connected me to Marie Dobier, who asked, “Why do you wish to speak to Mademoiselle, Major?”
“I have an item that belongs to her.”
“And what would that be?”
“Just tell her what I said.”
I heard the phone clunk noisily as Marie, protective of her mistress, went to inquire. I had the impression she was as diligent as she was doctrinaire, meaning I might not have to wait long. Two French security men edged so close I was in the drift of their perspiration odor.
Simone’s silky voice came on the line. “George?”
“I’m in the lobby. If you can spare a few minutes, I’d like to come up.”
“A new development?”
“Yes.”
She cleared my passage with the guards, who escorted me in the mirror-plated elevator. She awaited me in the penthouse doorway. In tight peach slacks, an orchid short-sleeved blouse, and fashion sandals, she looked stunning. Her widely spaced, subtly shadowed green-blue eyes regarded me without expression. Gliding to the cream sofa, she motioned for me to sit, and she reclined into the absinthe-green chair. The corner of the glass-topped table separated us, and she picked up a lighter from the jade ashtray and flamed a cigarette. She must go through a lot of them, there were layers in the air, to drop onto the sofa was like an elevator ride through an Eiffel Tower made of smoke. Refracted sunlight dashed a spectrum across her blouse, and I wondered if she was the most beautiful woman in Saigon.
The curtains hung open to admit the surging sunlight. There were not many buildings around as tall as this one, none to obscure the view on three sides. On the south horizon, I could make out Cholon’s rooftops. On Thong Nhat Boulevard a few blocks away, a corner of the U.S. Embassy, and at the far end of Tu Do, the spires of Saigon’s Notre Dame Cathedral.
I asked, “Have you lived here long?”
“For years. I own the building.”
“It must be the best real estate in town.”
“It was. Now I think I shall sell.” A puff frosted the air between us. “You told Marie you have something of mine.”
A little push sent the orange purse across the table’s surface. She scooped it up and checked inside, closed the zipper, and restored her gaze to me. No wariness there, only the shading of amusement, the way an owner regards a pet that has done something cute.
“Last week, you wore a white sweater with a long neck and sleeves.” Unabashedly I scanned her bare arms and neckline. “Your bruises have healed.”
She leveled a stare that had no meaning aside from the absence of other signals. An aristocrat becomes practiced at issuing dismissals, and by her repose she invited me to proceed.
“My job was to learn the identity of a man who died in the jungle. To do that, I’ve had to ask a lot of questions. The answers have taken me beyond the bounds of my imagination.”
She tapped her cigarette against the jade ashtray.
“You were wearing a black sweater that night—a helicopter gets chilly at altitude. When the instrument panel blinked red, you would have been able to see the lights of the plantation antenna in the distance. It must have been strange, so close to where you grew up, to realize you were dropping into the rain forest. Then came the impact in the treetops, the engine gears ripping, glass and rivets popping out. Afterward, the only sounds were your breathing, both of you cased in the electric sensation of being alive.”
Reverie in her eyes? Impossible to tell.
“Yesterday I stood in the wreck. I climbed down the same way you did, through the vine tunnel, past those grabby thorns into the water of that smelly marsh. It was an awful place to find yourself at night. Two things worked in your favor. One was luck. To ride a chopper into the trees and walk away uninjured, you needed plenty. The second, you were with a good man. Whatever you paid Gerard to work for you, he earned it that night. He would have tried to send a distress transmission from a dry mound you came upon in the swamp. It didn’t help—nobody was answering. At dawn, soaked, the two of you began slogging westward toward the road, a long way off but the single course that made sense to you. He showed you the map location where he guessed you’d crashed. He carried the radio and the other gear. A compass too, which proved vital in finding your way. Tell me, did Gerard prepare the emergency kit, or did Major Stobe set it up for you?”