Saigon Red

by Gregory C. Randall

  She tossed her pistol onto the tabletop and left.

  Alex moved out of the apartment the next morning. Maria was disappointed, the kids heartbroken. Gianna said there were so many other things they wanted to see and do. Alex understood. A resigned Ilaria hadn’t yet told the children they would be going home in a week. Alex said she was sorry that it came to this. Ilaria gave Alex a hug as she walked down the hallway. Her bags would be sent to the hotel. Nevio stood at the end of the hallway, his stare blank. He didn’t say anything.

  Javier called and invited Alex to dinner that night. She wanted to say no, but realized that now was as good a time as any to resolve this mess. She wore an outfit that Ilaria had bought her in Milan. The thin threads of gold woven into the blouse’s fabric shimmered in the lights.

  Javier was waiting in the bar. She watched him from just outside the entry and mentally figured that this was the sixth or seventh time this same scenario had played out: hotel, bar, drinks, dinner, brandy, and a tumble. It sure as hell would not end like that tonight. She slid up into the seat next to him.

  “I wasn’t sure if you would show up,” Javier said. He pushed a tumbler filled with ice and vodka across the bar to a spot directly in front of her.

  “I wasn’t sure I’d come either,” Alex answered.

  “You look nice.”

  “For what this blouse cost, I’m a lot better looking than nice, cowboy.”

  “I’ve never been one with words.”

  “Not even close to a good excuse. It seems you can plot the future courses of nations, but can’t even offer a simple compliment.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s a woman’s way out, apologizing. Not going to happen. You hurt me bad, real bad. Potentially fatally. Do you understand that?”

  Javier used his finger to stir his drink.

  “Look at me, you son of a bitch,” Alex said. Javier did. “This hurt, but I’ll get over it. I see the big story, but can you? This game you and Campbell played put a lot of people in danger. And don’t give me that excuse about national security, military secrets, world peace. I signed on, I knew what to expect, or I thought I did. But this was way over-the-top. And for some reason, somehow I have the feeling I was used. And between us—that’s not good.”

  “We all have reasons for doing what we do,” Javier said. “Mine is to protect the United States.”

  “That doesn’t change anything between us,” Alex said.

  “Don’t you think it’s time for you to grasp what’s happening out in the real world?”

  “Damn, you still manage to step in your own horseshit. Give me some credit. I’ve seen a lot more depravity than you, bucko. Children left abandoned in tenements full of rats by cranked-up moms, drunks dying in their own filth, a bodega owner gunned down for a handful of dollars, kids shot for a pair of sneakers. On your level, it seems to be some type of worldly us versus them. On the level I’ve been working, it’s about hearts and souls, and stopping innocents and children from being killed.”

  She thought she saw a tear.

  “Are we done?” he asked.

  “I don’t know—I really do not know. I need time to think. We never had expectations; our future was day to day. We had opportunities, and Lord knows, we’ve had adventures—more in the last six months than most have in a lifetime. So, I honestly don’t know. I like you, cowboy, and some days it verges on love; but right now, it’s all way too complicated. Time may lessen the pain; then again, time may make me see reality.”

  Javier looked at Alex’s empty glass. “Another?”

  Alex looked at Javier, stood, and kissed him on the cheek. “I think I’ve had enough.”

  Later that evening, as she sat in her hotel room, she tried to understand everything that had happened during the last week. It was impossible; the revelations were piled thickly on top of each other. Her phone pinged. Her first thought was Javier.

  Sandy,

  Nicely done, well played. Until next time.

  Danny

  One week later, Alex stood at gate fifteen at Tan Son Nhat International Airport with Detective Tran Phan. No one questioned them when he showed his detective badge to airport security. Two days earlier she’d been in the same terminal, just a couple of gates down, helping Ilaria and the children board a plane back to Italy. Gianna was crying and said she would miss her. Paolo, still a little confused, smiled and gave her a hug. Maria had elected to stay in Vietnam and go north to see relatives that her parents had told her about.

  Alex wasn’t sure what would happen long term to the Luccheses, even with Nevio’s promotion. Chris had said that he would stay in Vietnam for at least two weeks until a replacement manager could be found. Alex hoped that Dark Star would just leave the family alone. It would take a lot for Ilaria to make them whole. They would never know the extent of the charade. Alex knew that, at some point, what Ilaria did to Harry Karns would come back and begin to haunt her, no matter what the justification was. That’s the way we are wired, Alex thought. Unless you’re truly psychotic, killing someone stays with you. She hoped that Ilaria would find help.

  Alex had significant issues with Chris: personal, moral, and maybe even governmental. Just how much she could adjust her view of the world to fit into the universe of Teton Security and Defense was undetermined. Time would tell. Chris hadn’t fired her—yet. She had a six-month contract, and she would honor it. But she knew that the parameters would be a lot different from now on.

  Alex and Phan watched the massive airplane maneuver up to the gate. Alex’s bag was over her shoulder.

  “I was never sure if this day would ever come,” Phan said. “I’ve believed, for most of my life, that a piece of me was missing, and now you drop into my life and my family’s. It’s strange on the one hand and on the other, healing. My mother raised me as a Catholic, but Buddhism pervades our culture and has influenced much of Vietnam’s soul. Buddha said that we need ‘to support mother and father, to cherish wife and children, and to be engaged in peaceful occupation—this is the greatest blessing.’ And now, Alexandra Polonia, I have come to understand what Lord Buddha meant.”

  The exiting passengers began to file past them. European, Australian, and American tourists; Vietnamese returning to their homes carrying babies and herding children; and the fresh face of Vietnam, businessmen and women, with their ears to their cell phones. Outside the glass windows of the gate rose the new skyline of Southeast Asia’s most exciting city.

  Alex pointed; Phan looked to see where. In among the arriving passengers were Roger and Alice Polonia.

  VIETNAM

  NOTES AND A BRIEF HISTORY

  Vietnam has been a battlefield of cultures and politics for more than two millennia. First the Chinese invaded, then the Mongols, then various tribal factions and warlords warred among themselves, then again the Chinese, and eventually, more internecine battles coalesced into a less than unified national government. In time, Buddhism, brought by the Chinese, became the accepted state religion. The arrival of French Catholic missionaries, who entered the country in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, led to France’s eventual nineteenth-century colonization and exploitation of the country. France was the dominant foreign culture for the next one hundred years.

  After World War II and the defeat of the Japanese, the United States continued to support the French in Vietnam with advisors, materials, and funds to help retain their tenuous hold on one of the last remaining colonies in their vast, but collapsing, post–World War II colonial empire. This empire, at one time, extended from Africa, across the Caribbean, through northern South America and the islands in the southern Pacific, to Vietnam. In 1954, nine years after the Japanese were defeated in Vietnam, the French were themselves defeated by the communist Viet Minh at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.

  As the French withdrew, the country was partitioned near its narrowest portion along the seventeenth parallel. As a result of the peace settlement in Geneva, Switzerland, the countries of
Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were granted independence. The consequences of this accord left the northern portion of Vietnam controlled by the communist Viet Minh, and the south by the predominantly Catholic government of the facile Emperor Bao Dai. For a year following the peace agreement, members of the Catholic minority in the north flooded south fearing persecution, while at the same time many of the supporters of the victorious in the south, the Viet Minh, headed north.

  During the next eight years, a civil war developed between the northern Viet Minh and the corrupt southern regime of the Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem who had replaced the emperor. But then, no civil war is simple or civil. During this decade, the United States government supported the South Vietnamese government, and as international sides were chosen and the expansion of the Soviet and American Cold War was now manifest worldwide, political positions in Vietnam became entrenched. Thousands died at the hands of the state executioners and assassins in both the north and south of Vietnam. Most Vietnamese, at the time, supported the northern communists. In the south, Diem offered elections to support his regime. In Saigon, he won elections by majorities that were greater than the number of voters. Corruption was rampant.

  The “domino theory” was proposed as the reason for American support of the Diem regime. This theory held that if the southern portion—called the State of Vietnam—fell to the communists, then, as John F. Kennedy said in a speech, “Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines, and obviously Laos and Cambodia [would be] among those whose security would be threatened if the Red Tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam.”

  As president, Kennedy steadily expanded the financial, logistical, and military support of Diem’s government. More pressure was also exerted from the north and from outside the country. Then, in the weeks before his own death, Kennedy turned on the South Vietnamese government, and Diem and his brother were executed by his own generals. Subsequently, at the time of Kennedy’s assassination, American support expanded until there were more than 16,000 American advisors in South Vietnam. The new president, Lyndon Johnson, sustained this support until all-out war raged the length of both countries. The cities and harbors of the north were bombed; whole regions of the countryside were defoliated and poisoned. By the end of 1965, over two hundred thousand American military personnel were in South Vietnam.

  Tens of thousands of Vietnamese, both in the south and the north, were killed, maimed, and displaced during the late 1960s. In America, sentiment turned against the American government and its military actions in a country that many Americans considered irrelevant to their personal and political beliefs. Johnson and his government realized that the war could not be won, and they also began to recognize that their own generals were not telling the truth. After the Tet Offensive in February 1968, the United States was desperately trying to find a way out of the quagmire.

  By 1970, the American military had been in South Vietnam for almost twenty years. After Johnson chose not to run for reelection, the new president, Richard Nixon, began to substantially reduce the number of American troops. Within two years, hundreds of thousands of American troops, their weapons, and logistical support had been withdrawn. Vicious, yet indecisive, battles would continue to rage in Cambodia, Laos, and across North and South Vietnam for the next three years. This burning region of the world would be the focus of intense partisan politics in the United States and across the globe. Eventually, by 1975, the war would take down a president, bring blood to the streets of America, and lead to the eventual collapse and fall of South Vietnam.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  While the primary foci of Saigon Red are the characters and how the past sometimes will catch up with the present, the hazy background is the Vietnam War. For my generation, Vietnam was the seminal moment in our young lives. The war protests, the treatment of the returning soldiers (most the same age as the protestors themselves), and of course the war’s effect on American politics all defined this age. On one hand, it was all a strange and evil stew of deceit, lies, death, and cover-ups; on the other, battlefield heroics, the search for the truth, and the belief in the Constitution and human rights. To enumerate the references I used—books, television shows, memorials, and friends (soldiers and protestors)—would fill the rest of this page. I will spare you. However, to all these sources, I say thank you.

  I am also reminded how DNA testing has changed our perceptions of ourselves and where we come from. It is so common now to use one of the testing services; it has almost become a parlor game. The day I wrote this, a woman (after a test of her DNA) found a father she never knew, and a father found a daughter he knew nothing about. This is not unusual; stories abound about family discoveries and even family tragedies becoming known, all due to a simple swab of the cheek. When it involves criminal actions and convictions, we are no longer surprised. We live in an era of instant communication and strange coincidences—a novelist takes a simple idea and stretches it out into an international thriller. The story of Alex Polonia and Detective Tran Phan, while peculiar, is not at all impossible. I want to acknowledge fellow thriller writer and crime analyst Spencer Kope for his help in understanding the arcane art of DNA analysis.

  I also want to thank the editors and marketing staff of Thomas & Mercer for backing Saigon Red, the second in the Alex Polonia series. A special thank-you to Matthew Patin, developmental editor and copyeditor; his efforts made this a stronger story. And most especially a huge thank-you to my editor, Jessica Tribble, for believing in Alexandra Polonia, and Sarah Shaw and Gabrielle Guarnero, for handling the marketing. When it comes to author relations, they are a special team in the publishing universe.

  I am pleased to call my literary agent, Kimberley Cameron, both friend and mentor. It is exciting to be a client of her agency, Kimberley Cameron & Associates, and among amazing writers whose careers are enhanced due to the efforts of this incredible person.

  And a special hug to my wife and love of my life for forty-eight years, Bonnie, who is involved in every book I write. Her sharp insight, ideas, critiques, edits, and most especially friendship and patience make these stories happen. To be honest, they are as much her work as mine.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2010 Penelope Lippincort

  Gregory C. Randall is the author of Venice Black, the first novel in the Alex Polonia series; the Sharon O’Mara Chronicles; and the noir Tony Alfano Thrillers, Chicago Swing and Chicago Jazz. His young adult novel, The Cherry Pickers, won critical acclaim and awards and a five-star rating from Readers’ Favorite. Gregory was born in Michigan and raised in Chicago, and he currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information, visit www.gregorycrandall.info.