Escape from Saigon Page 10

  “Hi, I’m Sam. What’s your name?” Esposito asked as he filled the seat next to Lisette at the bar. “Oh, and while we’re getting to know each other, can I buy you a drink?”

  “It’s Lisette, and yes, gin and tonic.”

  “You don’t look Vietnamese,” Sam countered, as if to ask what the hell are you doing here and who the hell are you really?

  “What do you think?”

  “Chinese?”

  “Nope—maybe I’m Malaysian,” she responded putting the emphasis on mal, as if she meant bad. No sooner were the words out of her mouth that she realized she was coming on way too strong. So she cooled it down with, “And what are you? You don’t look Vietnamese, either.”

  “I’m an American.”

  “And what do you do, Sam?”

  “I tell stories and once in a great while, maybe once a year, I break a decent story that actually means something.”

  “You sound cynical. Like you hate the job. If you don’t like being a reporter why did you become one?”

  “’Cause it’s a Venus fly trap. When you are standing on the outside it looks tempting, delicious in fact, so you dive in, you get stuck and eventually it consumes you. When I started in New Haven, I worked for Parker Reines III at UPI. He’d light a cigarette, shove a sheet of copy paper in his typewriter, and by the time he’d ground out five-hundred words, it was time to grind out the cigarette he was smoking. Day after day. But Reines had another life. The shelves behind his desk were lined with books he had written. Reines’s Parallel was a critically acclaimed novel about the ennui of American and North Korean soldiers guarding the border between the two countries. Molotov was Reines’s exposition of how the U.S. withheld support from anti-communist rebels during the Hungarian Revolution. The critics loved that one, too. When he wrote Mercy about the Berlin Airlift, he turned a little piece of history, a story about modern air traffic control really, into a critical success.”

  “So far so good. Is there a punch line coming? What am I missing?” Lisette wanted to know.

  “There was another book on his shelf. I found a copy of From Here to Eternity. There’s a salutation in it from James Jones and a reference to the summer Jones and Reines had spent at Lowney Handy’s writer’s colony. It said: Parker, great having you in the next cabin, Lowney would be proud of you. You tell the truth. Warmly, Jimmy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So James Jones gets a blockbuster novel and a movie with Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr covered in sea foam in Honolulu, and now Jones lives in Hollywood and Reines is still punching out wire copy in a college town on Long Island Sound. See what I mean about a ‘career in journalism’? It’s a total crapshoot.”

  “No matter, Sam, I still want to cover the war. That’s why I came here. I think I can do a good job. In fact, I think I’d be a good reporter. Look at this face. Can’t you see this face on TV?” She continued, telling Sam about her Vietnamese roots and education and then thought, Christ, I’m giving this guy my résumé and all he wants is to get into my pants.

  “There’s a long line of wannabes just like you. They come here with these romantic notions about being a war correspondent, then they go out on an army chopper to get close to the action, get too close, and come back covered with blood—sometimes their own, sometimes from the soldier who was crouched down in the grass right next to them. Next thing you know, they’re on a flight back to the world.”

  “I don’t see you leaving,” Lisette said, looking for a reaction.

  “Look, if you think you’ve got what it takes, then get somebody—anybody—to hire you on as a stringer. My old boss Reines put in a good word for me and got me into UPI right off. If you’re thinking TV, buy an old Bolex, they’re cheap and there are plenty around since everyone’s got all the new fancy sound-on-film stuff. Try stringing for one of the smaller networks that supply film to Africa and India. Show up with some decent footage and you’re in. Besides, they might go for an on-air reporter chick.”

  “So, all I have to do is show up? That’s it?”

  “A good place to start is the Rex. Be there for the daily press briefings, wander around in the back of the room, keep your eyes open. See who asks the tough questions about what our president is doing to get us out of this mess and make nice. Somebody will take you on,” Sam told her.

  “Just like that?” Lisette responded in a low voice and touched his wrist in a way that got Sam’s attention.

  “Yeah, just like that. If nothing else you’ll find out why we call it ‘The Five O’clock Follies.’ If you’re lazy, you’ll take the briefings at face value, file your stories, go drinking at night, and repeat the process the next day and the next after that.”

  “And I suppose there is an alternative?”

  “An alternative? Sure. You can get on a Huey—the Army will take you anywhere on any mission—and do some real reporting. It’s up to you. Just keep your head down.” Sam paused for emphasis. “And wear your flak jacket.”

  He eyed her closely, sizing her up. A smart kid—and not bad looking either.

  “You said your name was Lisette?”

  “Yes. But you can call me Lise.”

  Thursday, April 17

  LOOK, I’VE GOT MORE THAN A hundred SVN nationals camped at my villa in Cholon and I’ve told them I’ll get them out, one way or another!” Riordan spoke in a hoarse half-whisper, leaning across Carwood’s desk to make his point. “I tried finding a ship to take them but the port has already emptied out. You’ve got to get them on a plane! I know there are still military cargo planes coming into Tan Son Nhut—one of them can take the whole bunch on their way out.”

  Steve Carwood was the only guy Riordan knew at the embassy. They had met shortly after each first arrived in Saigon, and they occasionally went for drinks at the Caravelle after work. Now Carwood looked across the desk at his friend and shook his head.

  “It’s too late, Riordan. The embassy and the military are only evacuating Americans and their dependents now. There are too many South Vietnamese who want to get out of Saigon—we can’t take them all.”

  “These people will be killed, you know that! Anyone who collaborated with us or worked for us will be targeted and murdered! I know them all, they’ve been with me for years—I can’t let that happen!”

  Carwood shrugged. “Try this. Take your family out to the airport and just process them through. It’s a madhouse out there—you’re an American, no one will notice or care who you claim.”

  Riordan looked at him incredulously. “You know I don’t have family here. Or documents for any of the people I want to take out.”

  “So create a wife and children, no matter who they are, and go out there and sign the papers we’re using for emergency egress of SVN dependents.”

  “You’re saying I can do that—even if they’re not my dependents?”

  “Hey, you didn’t hear it from me, okay? Look, here are the documents. Grab as many copies as you’ll need, fill them out and take, I don’t know, six or eight people at a time. Who’ll know? Our planes will take anyone who gets through the South Vietnamese police at the gate, and the ‘White Mice’ are stamping any papers that look authentic. No one’s left here to check anything.”

  Friday, April 18

  MERDE! THE WHITE MICE! THEY’RE HEADING this way!” Jean Paul warned his patrons from behind the bar at Le P’tit.

  White Mice was the derisive American slang for the officious Saigon police in their spanking white uniforms. The name stuck—even the Vietnamese translated it and called them chuôt bach, or white mice.

  “They are always looking for ‘suspicious activity,’” Jean Paul said, “which could be anything but it usually means they want a payoff. Or they could be sympathizers with the North. Either way, they are here to make trouble. Everybody, keep your mouths shut!”

  Two White Mice strolled in, holding their batons in the crooks of their arms. Jean Paul put on an Ella Fitzgerald album and dropped the needle. The cops strol
led around the bar, then one stopped at a table in the center of the room.

  “Girlfriend?” The officer challenged Cameron Fletcher, a tall, well-built Australian pilot with stringy hair who was sitting with a young Vietnamese woman.

  Fletcher flew for Air America, and had volunteered to help Jean Paul and any of his people out whenever he gave him the word. “The NVA will fight their way into Saigon. They’ll blow up half of Nguyen Hue Boulevard. They’ll blast their way into Le P’tit and when they get here we want to be sitting on a beach in Melbourne eating Vegemite sandwiches.”

  “What is her name?” the older of the two cops demanded, gesturing with his baton.

  “Tina.” It was the Australian’s mother’s name and the only name that popped into his head.

  “Show me ID.”

  She obediently opened her purse and handed him her government card. “Vo Thi Ng Dung” was printed next to her name on the laminated card.

  “Not Tina,” said the officer.

  The Aussie leaned over and tapped the ID with his index finger. “Lookie, mate. See, Thi Ng—same same Tee-na. Tina. That’s her English name, Tina!”

  Snickers broke out among the tables, then everyone at the bar started to chant:

  “Ti-na, Ti-na, Ti-na …”

  Humiliated, the White Mice turned and stormed out.

  Sunday, April 20

  MCWHORTER WATCHED THE AMBASSADOR THROUGH THE half-open office door. The Old Man had worked through the night and he’d been in a nasty funk all morning. Sometime around midnight—midday Friday, Washington time—Kissinger had shot back a reply to Martin’s angry Telex that he was being hung out to dry. Highly unusual for the Sec State to respond so quickly. Unusual that he had replied at all, the way relations between the ambassador and Washington had been lately. Now Martin sat facing the window, reading and rereading the reply.

  “Mr. Ambassador?” McWhorter didn’t bother to knock, but he waited a half-second before pushing open the door and entering. “This a good time to talk?”

  “Come in, Philip, and close the door.” The Old Man’s hair was snow white and had been as long as McWhorter had known him, and he was definitely getting on in years, but this morning he looked even older than McWhorter remembered. “I need you to do something for me.”

  “Sure, boss, what’s up?” He tried to sound cheerful. Not much of that around these days, what with the NVA knocking off one city after another and now bearing down on Saigon.

  “Something has to be done about our friend President Thieu. He’s unraveling. The whole damn country’s falling down around him and he’s making decisions based on his daily astrological chart! I want to ease him out—put Minh in and there’s a chance the North will sue for peace.”

  McWhorter, like everyone else in the mission—like most of the people in Saigon—believed that was a fantasy. It took only three weeks for the North Vietnamese to take Hue, Da Nang, and Ban Me Tuot. The last-ditch defenses at Phan Rang and Xuan Loc couldn’t hold much longer, and when they fell there would be nothing to stop the NVA from taking Saigon. Ball game over. But Martin refused to see it.

  “Sir, maybe it’s time we started evacuating some of our people and the people who’ve been working with us. There are thousands of South Vietnamese who are in real jeopardy from reprisals if the North gets its way. We’ve still got ships at the port that can take them all. If the NVA breaks through it will be too late.”

  Martin cut him short. “You forget there are still several ARVN divisions between here and the NVA—do you want to start the whole city panicking now? I’m not ready to throw in the towel and neither are the South Vietnamese—so I don’t want to hear any more about evacuating! Not from you or anyone else in this embassy! Got it?”

  “Yes sir. But we need to plan for every contingency.”

  “There’s time enough if it comes to that, and I don’t think it will. Neither does Washington. Kissinger wants us to hang on to Thieu awhile longer. He thinks he can use him as a bargaining chip—thinks the Soviets might see his resignation as a conciliatory gesture. Like the North, the Russians know we’ll step back in to prevent the South from total collapse, and they don’t want that to happen.”

  Martin glanced again at the cable in his hand. For his eyes only, dated yesterday, April 19. “My ass isn’t covered,” Kissinger had replied. “I can assure you I will be hanging several yards higher than you when this is all over.”

  When this is all over. It was clear to Martin that Kissinger was playing the endgame, throwing South Vietnam—and him, by inference—to the wolves in the North. Well, I’m not ready to give up, he thought.

  “Thieu’s got to tough it out, and so do we, for a little while longer,” he said to McWhorter. “The North may have taken ground but we’ve still got cards to play. They’re not here yet. In the meantime, I’ve got to meet with Thieu and prop him up—let him know that we’ll stand by him and see this through. I want you to go to the palace and set a meeting for tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes sir. Anything else?”

  “Oh, and cancel the press briefing for tomorrow—and the CIA briefings, all of them! I don’t trust the damn spooks and I want to put a tight lid on the information that comes out of here for the time being. There’s too much second-guessing going on, inside this embassy and out.”

  Martin wasn’t about to tell McWhorter, or anyone else on the embassy staff, what else Kissinger had to say: “We are agreed that the number of Americans will be reduced by Tuesday to a size that can be evacuated by a single helicopter lift.”

  After McWhorter left, Martin reread the cable again:

  0 19 1891Z APR 19

  FM THE WHITE HOUSE

  TO AMEMBASSY SAIGON

  2XM

  TOPSECRET SENSITIVE EXCLUSIVELY EYES ONLY

  DELIVER AT OPENING OF BUSINESS VIA MARTIN CHANNELS VH58728

  APRIL 19, 1975

  1. THANKS FOR YOUR 0715.

  2. MY ASS ISN’T COVERED. I CAN ASSURE YOU I WILL BE HANGING SEVERAL YARDS HIGHER THAN YOU WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER.

  3. NOW THAT WE ARE AGREED THAT THE NUMBER OF AMERICANS WILL BE REDUCED BY TUESDAY TO A SIZE THAT CAN BE EVACUATED BY A SINGLE HELICOPTER LIFT, THE EXACT NUMBERS ARE UP TO YOU. THAT HAVING BEEN DECIDED, I WILL STOP BUGGING YOU ON NUMBERS, EXCEPT TO SAY THAT YOU SHOULD ENSURE THAT THE EMBASSY REMAINS ABLE TO FUNCTION EFFECTIVELY.

  4. YOU SHOULD GO AHEAD WITH YOUR DISCUSSION WITH THIEU. IN YOUR SOUNDINGS RELATIVE TO HIS POSSIBLE RESIGNATION, HOWEVER, THE MATTER OF TIMING IS ALSO OF GREAT SIGNIFICANCE. IN ANY EVENT THE RESIGNATION SHOULD NOT TAKE PLACE PRECIPITATELY BUT SHOULD BE TIMED FOR LEVERAGE IN THE POLITICAL SITUATION. YOU SHOULD KNOW, ALTHOUGH YOU SHOULD NOT INTIMATE THIS TO THIEU, THAT WE THIS MORNING HAVE MADE AN APPROACH TO THE SOVIET UNION. WE SHOULD NOT BE SANGUINE ABOUT ANY RESULTS BUT, IF THERE ARE ANY, THEY COULD EASILY INVOLVE THIEU AS ONE OF THE BARGAINING POINTS.

  5. YOU SHOULD ALSO KNOW THAT THE FRENCH HAVE APPROACHED US WITH THE IDEA OF RECONVENING THE PARIS CONFERENCE. WE TOLD THEM WE WERE OPPOSED AND FELT IT WOULD BE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.

  WARM REGARDS.

  HK.

  Evacuate all but essential staff by Tuesday?! Martin thought. Damn Kissinger! Damn Congress and all of Washington! It’s not over! There will be no evacuation while we can still pull this out of the fire!

  * * *

  Because it was Sunday, Jack Star, the Saigon correspondent for the Boston-Tribune, decided to make it a day of rest. He needed a break, a time to think about his next story and whether he would stay or be part of the mass exodus of journalists leaving Vietnam each day.

  He wandered over to Givral’s Patisserie and ordered a Vietnamese coffee and a soft-boiled egg with a piece of a French baguette. The waitress brought the cup already half-filled with hot sweetened condensed milk. She placed a drip coffeemaker containing the fresh grounds over the mouth of the cup. As she poured a few ounces of hot water, he anticipated his first sip of the overly sweet hot brew. It would go perfectly with the French bread dunked in th
e gooey egg yolk. The whole experience reminded him of when he was a child, and his mother made him soft boiled eggs with toast cut into strips. She called them toast soldiers, toast soldiers with egg yolk helmets.

  The day before, Star had covered the weekly briefing held by Saigon’s Viet Cong military representative, Colonel Vo Phuong Dong. The briefings were a bizarre turn of events, bizarre even for this crazy war. During the American war years, the Viet Cong’s underground political organization in South Vietnam was known as the People’s Liberation Front, or PLF. But since the Paris treaty, the PLF had morphed into something now called the Provisional Revolutionary Government, or PRG. Presumably this lent an air of authority to what was once an “unofficial” body.

  It also gave former Viet Cong guerillas and their North Vietnamese compatriots the right to hold their own press conferences. They were sequestered at Camp Davis, a neutral diplomatic compound set up at TSN where North and South Vietnamese, Americans, and the PRG attempted to end the war with the least amount of bloodshed. The compound was named for the first American killed in Vietnam, Specialist fourth class James T. Davis, who died in a Viet Cong ambush shortly before Christmas 1961.

  This situation was fraught with complications. For the North Vietnamese, if they attacked the air base, they feared the Viet Cong at the compound would be taken as hostages or slaughtered by their ARVN guards. There was also some concern that the Viet Cong negotiators could suddenly demand political asylum and escape to the land of plenty.

  Meanwhile, South Vietnamese troops patrolled outside the fence, occasionally sticking their gun barrels through the open chain links to threaten their hated enemies, while their adversaries calmly tended vegetable gardens and flower-bordered lanes on the opposite side. As for the South Vietnamese government, they worried that their soldiers would simply decide one day to shoot the VC and be done with them, which would potentially trigger the invasion of Saigon everyone hoped to avoid.