Escape from Saigon Read online

  “Age?” Carwood asked, taking a notebook from his pocket.

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six. Carwood, what is this all about?”

  “Do you have any relatives in Saigon?”

  “No. They are all dead.”

  “Thu, let me say it this way. Martin is delusional.”

  “What do you mean, ‘delusional’?”

  “He’s not well, physically or mentally. He is fooling himself. He doesn’t see what is happening.”

  “He said many times that when the time came, we would be rewarded for our loyalty. We would have instructions on where to go, if there is an evacuation.”

  “And do you have these instructions?”

  “I do not. But they have been promised.”

  “Don’t be so damn stupid!” Carwood blurted out before he could catch himself.

  “You are scaring me now! And you are being a little bit rude!”

  “You can’t count on Martin to make good on his promises. Listen to me. When it is time, I will send for you to come to Le P’tit Bistrot. There you will get instructions and the paperwork you need to get out of Saigon. Do you know the place?”

  “Yes. Yes. I know it.”

  “Just be there when I tell you. I’ll get you out.”

  * * *

  Nuoc Thi Quanh sat alone in her bedroom, trying to decide what to do next. Incredibly, her mother and father—her entire family—had chosen to go to America with Pham’s husband, Matt. Let them go, she thought. As soon as the war ends they will return, despite what they say.

  She thought about her fiancé, who was off somewhere with his helicopter unit. Nuoc had not heard from him in almost a week, but he was an experienced Air Force officer and a pilot. She was sure he was all right. But what would she do, all alone, if the Northern soldiers managed to invade the city?

  What she wasn’t going to do was wait around until that happened. Her music teacher, Truc Vu, would be in his office at the Opera House now. If anyone could advise her, it would be him. After all, she was always his favorite student.

  As she was about to leave, a tall American entered the courtyard.

  “Nuoc?” he said. “Are you Nuoc Thi Quanh—Pham’s sister?”

  Hearing her sister’s name surprised her. She had not seen Pham in over a year—not since Pham’s last visit to Vietnam, after she had married and moved to California.

  “Who are you?” she said.

  “I’m Pham’s husband, Matt. A couple of hours ago I helped your family onto a plane for the Philippines.”

  “They were foolish to leave! They are giving up their home, their country! For what?”

  “Everyone knows the North Vietnamese have the city surrounded. What happens next is anyone’s guess. Your father is worried. He asked me to find you and help get you out.”

  “My place is here, with my husband—my fiancé. We will be married as soon as this stupid war ends. It won’t be as bad as everyone thinks. The communists will be no worse than the miserable government we already have.”

  “Your father told me your fiancé and his unit are somewhere out there right now, probably up in Phan Rang, trying to hold back the North Vietnamese. If he isn’t killed in the fighting, he will be captured when the NVA overruns the rest of this country, including Saigon. It’s happened before—are you old enough to remember the Tet Offensive in ’68? There will be reprisals. Anyone who is allied with the South or with its soldiers will be punished.”

  “I don’t believe you and I’m not going anywhere until I see my fiancé again!”

  Matt stood silently, trying to think of a way to move her forward. He liked that she was willing to stand her ground, though. She reminded him of her big sister Pham.

  “Tell you what,” he said, finally. “Take two days, no more, to locate your guy and decide what you’ll do. I’ve got a Marine buddy at the embassy—I’ll see if he can get us a couple of exit visas. I’ll even get one for your fiancé and find a way to get us out of the country. Civilian evacuations of South Vietnamese nationals have stopped, but there may still be some flights out, or maybe a ship that will take us. But you have to promise me—we meet back here no later than Thursday, okay?”

  Nuoc looked doubtful. “I’ll meet you here, but I’m still not going anywhere without my fiancé.”

  “Then let’s leave it there for now,” he said. “Meanwhile, be careful. Everything I’ve seen tells me this city could fall quickly. We don’t want to be here when that happens.”

  Friday, April 25

  RIORDAN SAT IN THE BACK OF a sweltering cyclo and watched the same official process—and turn away—people at the gate. Four SVN employees sat with him and another six waited in a second cyclo. After an hour, the official got up from his seat and left the tent and was replaced by another man. When Riordan was sure the first official was gone, he and the group headed for the tent.

  The line was even longer today, with dozens of anxious, obviously frightened nationals already in the queue and more arriving every minute. Riordan and his group took their places in line and inched forward with the rest. They had passed scrutiny once. Was it possible they could do it twice, or more than twice? And what about the others at the bank waiting to take their turn—the odds were even greater against their going. It simply wasn’t possible. They would be caught, and then what?

  Once again the official eyed Riordan and the group’s papers warily. Then, without a word, he waved the group past the desk with a resigned shrug.

  “Go!” he said.

  “To the plane?” Riordan replied, momentarily stunned.

  “You not want to go?” said the official, now equally confused.

  “No! No! We’re going! I mean, they’re going—to the plane!”

  Before the official could speak again, Riordan began hustling his group toward the gate, urging them on. He didn’t have to hurry. As soon as they stepped away from the desk, the crush of people behind them surged forward, shouting all at once in Vietnamese. The official disappeared behind the crowd.

  Riordan couldn’t believe their luck. But would it last? Twenty-five gone, he thought as he headed back toward the city. Only seventy-three left to go.

  * * *

  The ride from Nuoc’s home to central Saigon was only a few kilometers, and she covered the distance on her bicycle in good time. The streets were strangely empty. When she arrived at the Opera House she was disappointed to find no one there. The grounds were vacant and the building was locked. Truc Vu was nowhere to be found.

  An old woman passing by told her that everyone had gone away because they were frightened of the North Vietnamese. They’re all afraid! thought Nuoc—her mother and aunts were so afraid, they let the Americans talk them into leaving their own homes. Who cares! The North Vietnamese are still Vietnamese, after all. Let them come! What did it have to do with her? She had no interest in politics. She cared only about what her life would be like after she and her husband were married.

  But she still needed to find Truc Vu. She went to the rear entry of the Opera House and pounded on the door. At first there was no response. Then, as she was about to give up, the door opened a crack and a small, elderly man peered out.

  “Truc Vu!” she cried. “I was hoping to find you. I need to talk.”

  “Why are you even here, Nuoc?” he said, hurrying her inside, then closing and locking the door behind them. “Everyone who can go has already left Saigon. You should be gone, too! It is no longer safe here in the city.”

  Truc Vu’s tiny office looked like a typhoon had blown through it. Sheet music was scattered everywhere, piled on his desk and strewn across the floor. His leather satchel was brimming with papers. The old teacher seemed distracted, as though he had forgotten something and wanted to find it, but Nuoc had interrupted him.

  “It looks like you are leaving, too,” she said.

  “Yes, tonight! My son knows a way we can travel west to Can Tho, where our
cousins live, without encountering the Northern soldiers. We have to go right away, my son says. Tomorrow could be too late.” Truc Vu hesitated, seeing the crestfallen look on Nuoc’s face. “But what about you? Where will you go?”

  “I am staying. I need to be here when my fiancé returns.”

  “And where is he?”

  “He’s a helicopter pilot. I’m not sure where, but they’re not far from the city.”

  Truc Vu inhaled sharply. “Oh no, no, no,” he said. “That is not good. Surely you know that many soldiers have died already trying to hold back the North, and many more will perish as the fighting continues. You must think of yourself! Save yourself!”

  “How can I leave if he knows I am here waiting for him?”

  “He would not want you to stay here if it cost your life! If your soldier survives he will come and find you, I am sure of it. I would offer to take you with us but our little Deux Chevaux cannot carry any more—there is barely room for our family! Do you have anyone who can help you?”

  Nuoc looked away, lost in thought. “There might be a way. I need to think about this …”

  “Dear Nuoc, you were always my brightest pupil. Think carefully, but please do not wait any longer than necessary.” The old teacher looked infinitely sad. “We are seeing the end of Saigon, and Vietnam, as we have always known it. Better to leave now. I believe my son is correct when he says tomorrow may be too late.”

  No Exit Visas

  Không có thị thực xuất cảnh

  Sans Visa de Sortie

  * * *

  Jean Paul nailed it to the front door of Le P’tit. He knew it would do little to discourage desperate evacuees. But he had to try anyway. The steady stream of humanity looking for a way out of Saigon was building on the boulevard and too many of them were wandering into his bar, going table-to-table looking for someone, anyone who could give them hope of obtaining an exit visa.

  Le P’tit was jammed. Lately, most of the customers were strangers, people Jean Paul had never seen before. The crowd inside was nothing compared to the South Vietnamese who were gathering on the sidewalk asking anyone who walked in: “You sell me exit visa? Xin vu ra y lam on. Please?”

  The scene was pretty much the same in front of Givral’s, the coffee shop and patisserie on the corner of Tu Do and Le Loi that had been run by the same Vietnamese woman since 1960. Givral’s usually reliable rumor mill was spinning out of control. The latest talk on the street had a CIA analyst spurning his former lover when she pleaded for help getting out of the country. She then shot herself and died in a pool of blood on the street, but not without first taking the life of their eighteen-month-old baby.

  The bookshop and newsstand, across the street from the Continental Palace was jam-packed. Where the city’s intellectuals once stood in line on Fridays, waiting for the bundle of Paris Match magazines to arrive by post, they now huddled inside, beseeching the owner for help. “You must know someone, anyone who can get me an exit visa!” cried one Saigon University professor, adding, “Look at these hands, they were not made for the labor camps.”

  Outside, an Algerian holding a sheaf of genuine exit visa blanks was negotiating with a woman who needed five for her family. He demanded a thousand U.S. dollars—each. She haggled until he agreed to two thousand, four hundred fifty dollars for all five. It was all the money she had. As soon as she handed over the money, he thrust the papers into her hands and disappeared around the corner. She didn’t discover his sleight-of-hand until too late. The top sheet was indeed an exit visa; the rest of the pages were blank.

  In front of the national post office—the only place in Saigon where anyone could still make an international phone call—a woman clutching a U.S. phone number on a scrap of paper and fifty thousand piasters stood in a queue that wrapped halfway around the building. She had worked for the Air Force Information Office until 1973, the year her American employers departed.

  When her turn to use one of the three available public phones arrived, her call wouldn’t go through. Confused, she asked the clerk for help.

  “My colonel, Colonel Biederman, promised to get me to the States when he left Vietnam,” she explained. “If I can talk to him, I know he will help me.”

  The clerk looked perplexed. “This number is old. It is probably out of service.”

  “Please, sir,” the woman pleaded, but her requests went unanswered. The clerk gently moved her aside and called to the next person in line.

  Nearby at the Rex Hotel, workers had barricaded the doors to keep out people seeking shelter. Barricades had appeared at City Hall and other public buildings as well. Across from the Rex, the broad steps of the Opera House where teenagers gathered on Friday evenings to chat with their friends and flirt with one another were now clogged with families that had given up hope of escaping the city. No one could help them now. All they could do was sit there with their belongings. Waiting.

  Throughout the city, Vietnamese continued to badger anyone who looked American or European. They stood on every corner, pleading:

  “You sell visa? Exit visa? Xin vu ra y lam on?”

  “Please, sir? Exit visas for my family?”

  Those without political influence or connections quickly realized that their fate—their lives—would be in the hands of their decades-long Communist enemies. For those who had worked for American companies, the military, or the U.S. government, a favorable outcome was by no means certain. Global Bank and Pan Am were seeking ways to get Vietnamese employees evacuated, moving mountains of paperwork and piles of money and chartering aircraft to get them out of the country. For most of the other Vietnamese, their former U.S. employers had ignored their pleas or disappeared.

  Vietnamese brave enough to step inside Le P’tit stood out against the backdrop of expats and foreign journalists. They sat alone and ordered the cheapest drink on the menu, a local 33 Beer—Ba Muoi Ba—with ice. After twirling the glass a bit and taking a few sips, they’d ask, “Perhaps you know someone who can get an exit visa? It is for my family. It is not for me. Money is no problem.”

  Jean Paul’s answer was always the same: “I know of no one, but stay close. Luck may find you.”

  Standing at his post behind the bar, Jean Paul turned to a new customer who had sat down on a stool. “Isn’t it funny, where people come when times are desperate, Padre, my bar and your church, and now even the church has arrived here,” Jean Paul mused, filling the priest’s glass from a bottle of Hennessey that he had stashed on the shelves behind the bar. Tossing the empty into the trash, he added, “A perfect union, booze and God. Shall we drink or shall we pray, Padre?”

  “Maybe a little bit of both,” Father André Dessault answered. As archbishop of Saigon, he had been baptizing, marrying, and burying his parishioners at the Cathedral de Notre Dame for two decades. It was a job he held since the country was partitioned in the 1950s. His salt and pepper hair was jet-black then. He was lean and strong. Women often fanned themselves and giggled after he passed, as if his dimpled chin, liquid gray eyes, and porcelain white teeth where too much to take. There was always plenty of gossip about how he had an open heart for widows and bar girls seeking salvation.

  “It’s happening all over again,” Father Dessault told Jean Paul, “I know the signs. At first, the high officials charter planes to send the rest of their money to Geneva. Then their families suddenly need a vacation in Paris and off they go. The foreign governments and companies are getting their employees out on charter flights, their Vietnamese wives and children will go with them. Girlfriends, especially those whose boyfriends have wives in the States, will weep. But this time it will be worse. This time it is total defeat. South Vietnam is wounded, bleeding, and crawling in the gutter. The communists will finish her. There will be no mercy.”

  Jean Paul simply shrugged and nodded in response as he mopped the bar with a rag, saying in a low voice, “It is a pity nothing can be done.”

  “Jean Paul,” Father Dessault, said harshly and a
little too loud.

  “What!”

  He had Jean Paul’s attention. The priest lowered his voice and whispered, “I know you can help me, Jean Paul. I know you can! You have your ways and your secrets. You know you do.” He leaned in, and was hardly audible, “There are more than a hundred of my parishioners hiding in the Cathedral. It’s the first place they’ll look. I’ve got another maybe five hundred in orphanages and convents around the city. Centre Caritas can’t take any more, we’ve already got three hundred hidden there. I checked. The American C-130s are still flying, and the U.S. Air Force sergeants who are booking people onboard are not looking too closely at anyone’s papers. Fake or not, if you’ve got an exit visa and a halfway believable story, they will let you through.”

  “Padre, you are breaking my heart.” Then, making sure no one was within earshot, Jean Paul added, “Bring in a dozen, no, make it ten at a time. I mean it, small groups. Have some of the women come with foreigners—find some fake boyfriends for them, the more they look like lovers or married the better. That way no one will suspect.”

  * * *

  As soon as Father Dessault arrived with the first batch, Jean Paul motioned to them to follow and walked the group to the rear of the bar, unlocked the back door, then led them down a long alleyway with trash underfoot and laundry waving above. Two more turns and then, between the narrow canyons of Saigon’s slums, they had arrived at the front door of a low, yellow ochre building. Jean Paul knocked.

  “Let them in. Quickly,” came a voice from inside.

  The group nearly filled the space. In one corner, a sweat-soaked, shirtless American—whom she called Carwood—was sorting papers on a table. A Vietnamese woman who appeared to be in her forties was wearing a shirtwaist dress and had a camera slung from her neck. Incense burned in the Buddhist shrine along the far wall. A Christmas tree bulb made the shrine glow from behind.

  “Stand here. No there, in front of the sheet on the wall.” The Vietnamese woman aimed her Polaroid camera. She photographed each of the newcomers and handed them the picture. The windows were covered so that no one in the neighborhood could see the camera flash.