“More damn rain,” Gil said glumly, staring out the window of the Caravelle Hotel. “Look at that shit, would you?”
It wasn’t the first time Gil had been at the Caravelle, although the last time had been a big chunk of a lifetime before, on a couple days R&R out of 7th Special Forces. He’d been a young man then, just into his thirties, and now here he was, pushing sixty, a grandfather twice over, and feeling it a little. Where had the years gone? It seemed like yesterday, and it seemed like forever.
Harold had stayed at the Caravelle, too, on an R&R almost as long ago, and had memories of a wild time. Steve told them he had been by the place once or twice, but by then it wasn’t really a place where field grunts hung out, and his mind was on other things than sightseeing back in those days.
All of them had memories of Saigon – well, it was Ho Chi Minh City now, but none of them could quite bring themselves to think of it like that – from other days. Back then it had been a busy, crowded city, alive with people and activity, teeming with cyclos and motorbikes and exotic girls in gossamer ao dais and conical hats, traffic everywhere, incomprehensible ads on buildings in a language filled with carets, street hawkers, little boys pimping and begging, bar girls in short, tight skirts, strange food, strange smells, all the dreams of the orient come to life. Despite the new name and a vastly different atmosphere, traces of the once vibrant city remained, much muted and gray now, but still showing signs of life and at least a few memories of other times.
The three of them could remember the place when it had been crawling with military, lots of olive drab American and Vietnamese, military vehicles all over the place. There were still signs of that, although the signs of the American presence that had once been so prominent were now largely gone, replaced by fewer men, mostly wearing baggy gray, but all in all not terribly noticeable. The Caravelle seemed different, too. No longer was it roaring with guys back from the field, trying to pack as much good time in as they could in a few short days before they had to head back out into the boonies, filled with correspondents trying to make sense of the daily briefing, or telling war stories while getting blasted out of their mind from the memories of them. Now, the Caravelle too was somber and quiet, and even the echoes of those days were faint. A gray pall seemed to have fallen over it, and it now seemed much more oriental in its way. Most of the visitors were oriental as well – Japanese, mostly, but there were others, too, including a few bearded and long-haired Europeans, mostly with backpacks. Not many visitors, though; the place was quiet, and the rainy season had something to do with it.
“I remember it raining, but not like this,” Harold agreed. They’d been in Saigon for three days now, and they could feel their chances of accomplishing anything about finding Henry Toivo slipping away.
The trip had started out well. Bud had driven them down to the airport in Kate’s big station wagon, piled high with gear in the back. Well, not that high; they’d had to do a little cutting to keep it under 85 pounds apiece, just so they wouldn’t have to deal with excess baggage charges. A lot of the gear they’d hoped to take on a full expedition stayed home, things like metal detectors and a lot of the excavation tools, but they did bring an entrenching tool and a couple of garden trowels, just in case. They all carried cash, lots of it, mostly in bills that were twenties and smaller, in wallets, money belts, and other places – Gil’s boots were a little tight, for example, as he had about a thousand dollars worth of arch support in each one.
The flight to Minneapolis had gone all right, as had the flight to Tokyo, with a brief stop at Anchorage. Although it had been pretty to look down and see Canadian and Alaskan mountains passing below, there wasn’t much to see out the windows once they were past Anchorage, as most of the way there was a solid undercast, with the ocean only visible through the occasional break in the clouds.
It was in Tokyo that things began to go bad. There had been a mechanical difficulty that delayed the flight several hours, and by the time they got to Manila, they were too late to make their connection to Hanoi, and couldn’t get another flight for two days.
With little else to do but fume and kill time, they at least used some of their waiting time usefully. They spent a long time talking with an Air Philippines ticket counter man, and that eventually led to talking with his superior, who told them it was too bad they hadn’t come along in another couple months. Since the troubles with Cambodia had ended, the Vietnamese were easing access restrictions, in hopes of drawing a little tourist traffic and the resulting foreign exchange. Before too much longer there would be a direct air connection to Tan Son Nhut, outside of Ho Chi Minh City, and at somewhat less expense, at that. They also learned there would also be direct connections from Bangkok and Hong Kong.
But that was in a couple months. For now, they had to go by way of Hanoi. They got there, had to go through a long hassle to get through customs, and still had to check in with the authorities. It was then they discovered, or were told, they were supposed to be a tour group, not just three guys who showed up, and where was this trip leader, McMahon?
They’d already made two basic decisions. First, they were not going to lie about what they were doing – they were there to look for the remains of an old friend. The main group would not be along until December, but they’d come to see what problems they would face in the search so they’d have some time to prepare for the real search, which McMahon would lead. That was pretty close to the truth, anyway.
They’d also decided to conceal one thing: the fact that Steve was moderately fluent in Vietnamese – not real fluent; he was rusty, since he and Binky hadn’t practiced much the last few years, not wanting to confuse the kids. He could make himself understood to Vietnamese he didn’t know, he’d learned from talking with some of the people they’d talked to over the last couple years about being an interpreter, and they’d all said he had an accent that was tough to make out.
Eventually, the authorities allowed them to go on to Ho Chi Minh City, but only if they took a local tour guide with them. They assigned a guide named Tran Duc Hong, who was supposedly an independent operator – although no one believed it for an instant – he was a watchdog, pure and simple. From what they could tell – and from what Steve could hear – he’d never been in Ho Chi Minh City before, and if he’d ever been in South Vietnam it had been carrying an AK-47 and wearing baggy gray. He was a communist from the word go, and as full of propaganda as could be. And, his English wasn’t all that good; Steve probably spoke better Vietnamese than he did English. It was clear he was going to be a problem.
Even worse, they’d gotten in to Hanoi too late to make the daily flight to Ho Chi Minh City, and all the time they wasted with the authorities meant they missed the next day’s flight, too. They didn’t even bother with a hotel, but just spent the night sleeping as best they could in the extremely uncomfortable seats in the air terminal.
The flight to Ho Chi Minh City was scary – it was in a battered-looking Air Vietnam Russian turboprop that had clearly seen better days, and its good days had been none too healthy. The seats were very bad, uncomfortable and torn, and didn’t even have seat belts. It didn’t even look like anyone had bothered to sweep it out in the last year or so. They figured all the way that something important could fall off the plane at any time, like, say, a wing. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, and all of them were just about ready to kiss the ground when they got to the not-unfamiliar stop of Tan Son Nhut airport outside of Ho Chi Minh City.
So, rather than the two, perhaps three days they’d hoped for to make it to Saigon – er, Ho Chi Minh City – it had taken them more than a week of nights spent in airline seats or airport terminals, with the exception of one night in Manila. By the time they got to Tan Son Nhut, they were tired, grubby, and grouchy, and the rain just made it worse. The original plan was to only stop there long enough to find some sort of transportation out to Phuoc Lot, but it was late in the day, so they thought spending a night in a bed wouldn’t hurt them.
So, they’d wound up in the Caravelle, as it rained like mad outside. They were as sure as sure could be that the room was bugged, so they didn’t dare talk very much, and it was difficult to get outside on the street where they might be able to talk a bit without Hong tagging along. That morning, they put it to Hong about finding some wheels and a driver to get up to Phuoc Lot, and Hong disappeared for a few minutes and came back with “No can go Phuoc Lot. Water too much. We go see War Crimes Museum?”
No way.
They didn’t do much that day but watch it rain. The next day, they put it to Hong about finding transportation again, and this time, Steve went along, just to get out, he told Hong. He tagged along with him for a couple hours, and from what he could hear, Hong was trying to make it look like he was looking for transportation without finding any. By the time the two got back he was just as sure as mud that Hong had no intent of getting out of Ho Chi Minh City, and didn’t particularly like getting wet. They got back, and again Hong told them, “No can go Phuoc Lot. Water too much. We go see War Crimes Museum now?” Steve just smiled and expressively shook his head at the other two.
Since they figured the room was bugged, the three of them resorted to notes when Hong wasn’t around, a little later on that day.
Hong full of shit, Steve wrote on a sheet of paper torn from a notepad. Didn’t even ask. I could get wheels in half hour.
Would he find out you talk VN? Gil wrote.
Steve shrugged, and wrote, Probably.
Better not, Gil wrote. Piss him off, visas maybe get pulled.
Harold took the paper, and wrote. We R fucked. Have to leave in 4 days now. Even if we knew where H was, no time to dig. Probably better not fuck things up for Dec.
Steve and Gil just nodded to that. Gil sat thinking for a moment, and then wrote, ? – Is Hong asshole? Or gvt. policy?
Steve shook his head and wrote, Hard to say. He asshole anyway. But, gvt? Can ask if I can get free of him.
Harold frowned, then took the paper and scribbled, ? – Other tails? Not noticed any, but not looking.
Gil took the paper. Can split up, he wrote. Find excuse. I might notice another one.
Should know now, Harold wrote. Or Dec. fucked, too. Ideas?
Steve smiled and took the paper. Tomorrow Sun., he wrote. I go mass at cathedral, big attraction anyway. Take Hong. You go for walk.
How long gone? Gil wrote.
2-3 hrs? Was Steve’s written reply.
Gil took the paper – it was getting full, and he turned it over and wrote on the back side, Make longer?
Sure, Steve wrote back. Could even visit g.d. crimes museum.
Gil nodded, and Harold nodded with him.
They sprung it on Hong the next morning – there was no point in giving him time to arrange something. Gil and Harold assured him they’d pretty much be around the hotel, and probably would just eat in the dining room, and Steve told him they’d probably be a couple hours.
It was a fairly nice morning, the first they’d had that it hadn’t been raining heavily, although the humidity hung heavy in the air and it was clear there’d be more rain by afternoon. Steve hadn’t been to the cathedral before – he’d had other things in mind when he’d been on R&R in Saigon in the seventies, things involving women and alcohol – although he’d been told it was quite a sight, and he knew Binky had been there lots. It was strange to walk around and think about it, think about her having been there, growing up in this city, ages ago. Somehow, now, it didn’t seem like it could have been the same person, but Steve knew it was, and could not help but think about it. He couldn’t help but wonder if maybe, when he’d been there before, if perhaps he’d seen a very young Nguyen Binh Ky, walking down the street in a schoolgirl ao dai, and thought of the long and different and difficult roads they’d followed before they met. It was an eerie feeling.
The mass was interesting, still conducted in Latin, and Steve remembered some of that from when he’d been a kid. He’d strayed away from the church for a few years, but started getting back to it even before getting serious with Binky, and it was a little comforting to know at least this touch of the familiar was present.
More comforting was the way Hong oscillated when Steve suggested they visit the War Crimes Museum once they came out of the mass at the cathedral. As much as he’d bugged them for days about wanting to make the visit, he wanted to get right back to the hotel so he could check on Gil and Harold, although he wouldn’t say that. It would be unfair to say Steve dragged him to the place, but he was noticeably reluctant, and Steve had considerable pleasure in dragging out the visit. “Come on, Hong,” he told him. “I want to see this, and we’ll never drag the other guys along.”
It was mostly anti-American propaganda, of course, although Steve was a little surprised to see the vast majority of it was directed at the effects and aftereffects of the Agent Orange defoliation. Some were horrendous, and Steve had his doubts about it, anyway, although he remembered being a hell of a lot more comfortable in a defoliated area, way back when. They were safer, for the moment, anyway.
But, when it came to war crimes, it was all one-sided, of course. Steve had been with Binky a long time now, and had taken more than a slight degree of interest in the boat people and the postwar hell they’d escaped. While many had made it to safety, estimates ran as high as a hundred thousand people dying on the escape, like Binky’s mother, and Vinh and his family, dead at sea, from thirst and starvation, and elsewhere from pirates and rape and murder. People were still fleeing Vietnam by boat, still making the risky journey. Steve now knew most of them were ethnic Chinese who were being persecuted by the government, not Vietnamese, but the U.S. government was nowhere nearly as friendly about taking them in as they’d been ten years before.
But there were more dead than that. Estimates of the number of people who the Communists had killed in Vietnam after the end of the war ran well over a million, meaning more people were killed after the war than were killed in it. And, that million included Binky’s father and brother; rumor through other boat people she knew had her other brother dead as well, but there had never been any way to confirm that.
And, to top it off, another four and a half million or more had died in all the troubles in Cambodia, just across the border, another spin-off from the war’s end. Add it all up, and it came to a holocaust just as bad if not worse than was perpetrated in Europe in World War II – and not too many people were aware of it. The people who had pushed to get the U.S. out of Vietnam had that blood on their hands, but they never knew about it, or seemed to care. They slept quietly, but Steve still occasionally had to talk Binky down from the nightmares that came from the hell she’d managed to survive.
But there was no mention of those war crimes in the “war crimes museum,” and it got Steve a little cynical. He was real tempted to read Hong off about it, but realized it would be counterproductive. Besides, now Hong was really anxious to get back to the Caravelle and make contact with Gil and Harold again, which in itself told Steve all that they’d set to find out. Since what hadn’t been told at the “war crimes museum” had gotten Steve even more upset with the “interpreter,” Steve decided to twist the knife a little. They got a taxi, but Steve had the driver stop a few blocks short of the hotel, in the old bar area on Tu Do Street. It still was one of the more lively, cosmopolitan places in Vietnam. It was still a dive, and there were still bar girls and whores looking tawdry in short, tight skirts, and there were still little boys pimping for their “sisters,” although not as many as Steve could remember from those days half a lifetime before.
“Let’s have a ba moi ba for old times’ sake,” Steve told Hong, watching him squirm. The Vietnamese beer was just as bad as ever, if not worse. Steve figured the communists and the government had to use an even lower grade of formaldehyde in it than ever – but he also noticed Hong really liked the stuff, and he wound up having three while Steve struggled through one of the foul things.
By now, Hong was getting a little frantic, and Steve suggested they have another, since it was raining outside again, and all. He could tell that Hong was a little torn between having another couple of beers and checking back on Gil and Harold, but the latter seemed to be winning out. So, finally, long after Gil and Harold had promised they’d be back from their stroll, Steve let Hong wave down a taxi and they rode back to the Caravelle, where Gil and Harold were standing at the window, grumping about all the rain.