For the Life of Thi Lin Klein

by Jack Twist

  Chapter 28

  “Bloody hell,” I said. “Do I look like the Boston strangler or something?” We watched the jeep disappearing in the traffic.

  “Forget it. She’s being very nice really, to me at least. She says she owes it to my father, as an American citizen, to make sure I’m safe at all times. I’m supposed to stay inside the embassy until I go, unless I’m with her or Chuck, and this being my last night, she’s sticking her neck out a little for me.” She looked at me. “But, because it is my last night, and this restaurant is safe. Come on.”

  I would learn one day that some diggers attended restaurants in Saigon, but not many, and mostly during the earlier years when troop commitment was minimal. By the seventies the bars were the established haunts, and on this night I felt the sense of occasion. Even were Julie Shields as cold and hard as I imagined, she had looked after us on this night, in her restricting way, until 11 o’clock only.

  The ‘Mon Cherie’ had that dusty, unkempt look on the outside, despite the arched entrance, but the inside was far removed from the gaudy vulgarity of the bars I was used to. It was like a greenhouse. Profusions of tropical plants sprouted everywhere, some in huge pots others in hanging baskets. And we might have been in an American officers’ club, one where a team of servants removed all traces of dirt, corrected any suggestion of shabbiness, each day before the clientele arrived. A host of ceiling fans blended with the atmosphere and worked in respectful silence.

  Big tables were host to groups while couples occupied smaller ones, all separated from each other by the abundance of flora. I had never seen such pretty local girls, dressed in the traditional silk costume called ao dai, the sophisticates, obviously, of those who associated with visiting servicemen, all of whom in this restaurant were American. A four piece band played quietly in one corner amongst the fernery. A gentle version ofFerry ’cross the Mersey, with an Asian accent.

  Although all tables were privately positioned, the maitre de showed us to the most conspicuous in the middle of the room. They had opened large French doors at the sides and I could see empty tables in an outdoor section.

  “Julie’s idea?”

  Abbie smiled her agreement. “Prearranged. But don’t be too hard on her. She said this is the best and safest restaurant in town. And she said it’s safe because it’s probably communist owned. Yet, look at it. It’s full of Americans. I know my father will appreciate that little irony when I tell him.”

  We watched the band. “People around every corner, they seem to smile and say,

  We don’t care what your name is, boy, we never send you away.”

  Once again I had the sense that my plain greens jarred with the surrounds, announced my military lowliness, but I took comfort in the soft music, the decor, my anonymity and the company of the American girl. She was smiling her confidence, in the place, the whole world it seemed, even in me, my initial edgy glances at those around me notwithstanding.

  “You know,” I said, “I’ve already eaten. Sorry. While I was waiting to call you they were serving dinner at the mess.”

  “It’s okay. I’m not really hungry either. I’m more ... excited.”

  She was the object of several glances, more discreet than I was used to. “You look nice,” I said.

  “Thank you. Julie took me shopping. An Indian place. It’s a change from those flying suits, huh?”

  A waiter arrived with a menu. We explained that we only wanted drinks and I ordered a beer and Abbie a coffee. “So,” she said. “Tell me. When do you leave? Do you know exactly?”

  “Two or three weeks.”

  “And how on earth did you get here? Julie is convinced you are some kind of deserter.” I explained about the march. “Yes. I did hear something about it.”

  “We were allowed out tonight. The others were heading for the bars.”

  The waiter served us. Abbie was looking around her as I took a big drink of my beer. “I wish we could have a table out there,” I said. “Do you think maybe if I asked?”

  “We’re being watched, I believe. Wait till we’ve finished these drinks. And I’ve told you my big news.”

  “What?”

  “Guess who’s coming home with me?”

  “Who?” I suppose it was a stupid question but at that moment I was caught up with the pleasure of her company and not thinking straight, and wished, for one crazy second, that it could be me.

  And so, the primary reason for that light in her eyes. She was taking the baby home. It was all arranged. Some of the arrangements she would rather have not made, and as she explained these more dubious parts of her plan, shadows of doubt and regret crossed her face’s otherwise perfect brilliance. But it was done. They would fly out together tomorrow.

  “I have Chuck on side. I haven’t told him everything of course but he’s become kind of my driver. Julie is way too busy and he’s taken me out to the orphanage most days.”

  “She’s still in the orphanage?”

  “Yes.”

  Her father was still not well enough to help her, nor even to accompany them tomorrow, and she looked down, considered her cup of coffee as she told me that when he does go he might go straight to another hospital in the States.

  She had not seen the baby since our visit to the orphanage. The women were persistent in refusing her entry, and she chose to acquiesce, needing their cooperation, their unqualified agreement when it came time to take her. Chuck preferred to stay in the vehicle and never had time to wait around but she knew the baby was there because the price was now two hundred dollars, not one hundred, and of course there would be no money with no baby in exchange. She was disgusted and angry at having to barter for a human being, and her own sister, but it was countered always by the excitement of getting her out.

  As further proof that the baby was still there, Abbie had seen little Mai outside the orphanage on her bicycle, waiting and watching the way she did. She would not approach them and Chuck wouldn’t stop to let her talk to the child, so she would have to leave it to the woman in charge at the orphanage, who knew Mai and her family, to inform them that the baby had gone to America, to be with her father, and her half-sister. She hoped that one day, as an American, she might return to visit. She may even be entitled to dual nationality.

  “One thing at a time, Abbie.”

  Which dulled some of her brightness, but only momentarily. Because her plan was all in place. She had paid an official at the airport, the one in charge of non-military departures, three hundred dollars, and had been back to see him to confirm the date and time. A baby was easy to add because, obviously, she would need no seat.

  Chuck was her willing and obedient assistant in all this. Well, her driver at least. He knew nothing, yet, of the central plan and her commitment to it. He had agreed to take her to the orphanage to give the women milk for the babies, one in particular, and twice he had driven her to the airport, believing she was shopping at the PX store. And he always waited in the jeep which left her free to make arrangements. She said he was more amused than surprised when she suggested she might take the baby with her when she went home, so she had dropped the subject, not wanting to push the friendship. At which she looked at me.

  “A kind of friendship, that is. He still treats me like the helpless civilian. I had to convince him that I was okay inside the airport without him. I told him I preferred to shop alone. I’m afraid …” I waited while she considered something. “I think I might have to expect a call from Chuck sometime, after he goes stateside.” She assured me with a smile that the army sergeant, her new friend, would never be any more than that. It was all about the baby. And thanks partly to his help, the baby was going home.

  Tomorrow, when she emerged from that awful, smelly orphanage, her little sister in her arms, she knew Chuck would be supportive. Not that she was getting too carried away with his friendship or his amused sympathy. Her greatest asset, where Julie Shields and her driver were concerned, was their indifference. They had
nothing to lose and didn’t really care. With Jake Klein incapacitated, they saw the baby as the business of her Vietnamese family. And Julie was too busy with her work, with the war. She would not even have time to see Abbie off at the airport. A goodbye at the embassy was all she could afford.

  “I feel a little two-faced about not telling her, because she has been nice, ’specially now I’m going home. But I couldn’t count on her reaction.I can’t risk it. Whereas Chuck …well, he’s a real soldier. Good at following orders.”

  Her father’s health, the frustration at not being able to speak to him, were troubling. She had wanted to tell him, to prepare him, but she was sure it would be a great lift for him ultimately, wherever he was taken, to find his daughters, both his daughters, home and safe.

  “Is there any chance you can get away to see us off tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll certainly try.”

  “I mean, she’s your baby san too.”

  “Your coffee’s going cold.”

  She sat back and took up the cup. I drained my beer glass.

  “It has to work, Mark. She’s my sister. I can’t just leave her here.” She leaned forward. “If we all go, and even if the South hangs on, they will not be sympathetic to the children of Americans. And it’ll be worse if they fall.”

  “I hope she handles the flight okay. She looked pretty sick last time we saw her.”

  “Well, the orphanage nurses were very grateful for the milk I took them. And I’ll take some more with us on the plane.”

  She looked around the restaurant. It would have been easy to forget the war for a while in a place as sedate as the ‘Mon Cherie’, but as she took a sip of her coffee and replaced the cup there was concern in her eyes again. “I can’t wait to get her away from this terrible war. Do you know, around forty thousand American soldiers have now been killed.”

  I had heard that the number of Australians was now five hundred. “Speaking of the casualties of war, has anyone been sent out to the mountain at Muc Thap, to find our friend?”

  “I doubt Julie’s passed the information to anyone. She hasn’t said so.”

  Where did that leave Arkansas? Still living in the trees, smoking and chanting through the night, hoping that one day soon we could all go home. I presumed that the longer he remained that way the more fearful he’d become of returning to his unit. And how would the army treat him if he did return? Desertion was a serious crime.

  Years later I made enquiries. I wrote to the US Army for information on a Major Hall, army doctor, stationed in Vietnam in 1971. Nothing came of it. I never heard of Arkansas again.

  My drink arrived quickly. “So, you’re all set to go?”

  And she was nodding happily again. “I’ve filled out an emigration form, stating the name of her father. Once he claims her it’ll be fine. And I had to name her, on the form, so I called her Thi Lin. Thi Lin Klein. What do you think? I hope my father approves. But that can be sorted out at home. The thing to do is get her there. I mean, they can’t send her back.” I sat back to admire her. “Having you here is a good omen too. I wanted so much to tell you, papa san. Because you understand. But I must say, I had no idea I’d be telling you like this, in a restaurant like this. We can thank Julie for this, and she has no idea I’m taking the baby.”

  “Chuck might have told her, that you talked about taking her.”

  “No. He wouldn’t believe I could arrange it. And he’s on my side. I think he finds Julie a little too obsessive. Oh. And another strange thing Julie’s done. Quite out of character.”

  Her coffee cup was nearly empty but I dared not interrupt to ask if she wanted more. She wanted to talk, and when this girl wanted to talk, I wanted to listen. Looking around us she lowered her voice even further and leaned across the table.

  “She showed me two files, or part of them. One on Thi Lin Quang, communist agent. The other on Con Ma Nu, communist guerrilla commander. Can you believe that? She is so determined to show me how wrong my father was - how much his relationship with Lin put him in danger.

  “They make for fascinating reading, what I saw of them. My best friend in this country, present company excepted of course, was a communist agent. So of course to Julie and her colleagues my father was cavorting with the devil. And Con Ma Nu is even higher on the wanted list than Lin was. Much higher.”

  Thi Lin Quang was not her name when she first attracted the attention of government agents at Saigon University in the late 1950s. She was an active and vocal member of an active and vocal left wing group which was led by a history professor who later became her husband. Abbie added that this man was Mai’s father and if Lin’s commitment to an independent, communist government of her country could have intensified it did when he mysteriously disappeared. Her older sister had taken an active part in the defeat of the French and was already a communist organiser.

  Listening to Abbie’s little history of her late friend, Thi lin Quang, as seen through the eyes of American Intelligence, it occurred to me that it said something about her father too. When he took up with a local woman Jake Klein did not choose one of the acceptable Saigon socialites.

  With a group of fellow revolutionaries she had gone to Paris to study history and politics, with a deliberate Marxist bias. She also became fluent in English, making several trips to London where she developed friendships with other communists or sympathisers, some of them expatriate Americans.

  In 1965, as the American military presence in her country was building massively, she returned and was immediately recruited by the Hanoi government. Her name was changed to Thi Lin Quang and she was assigned to undercover work in Saigon, beginning as an interpreter with the American oil supply company. The file posed questions as to the length of time she stayed in this position, expecting that such an attractive, multilingual woman would have been moved on sooner, most likely to a position where she could infiltrate organisations of military importance. It noted however, that she had finished up with the small exploration section of the oil company in Vung Tau and suggested that the Hanoi government might have wanted information on where oil might be discovered.

  Lin’s work relationship with Jake Klein was not mentioned so that it seemed they had no knowledge of their personal one either. In fact no personal reference to the company’s chief geologist was made up until Lin’s death. Abbie presumed his work would have been closely monitored when they discovered her links with Hanoi, but if there was a file on Jake Klein Julie would not tell his daughter about it.

  “You don’t think your father was used by Lin?”

  She shook her head instantly. “Julie wants me to think so. But they’d been together for years. And I saw the way they were together. You know? And she had his baby, for God’s sake. They loved each other. I know they did.”

  “So, do they have any idea who attacked him yet? And why?”

  “Remember Le Dang Bah? The name Lin and Con Ma Nu both gave me. Well he was found to have an alibi. So Julie tells me. But she also told me that my father had been beaten on the same day that Lin was attacked. I’m sure this Le Dang Bah was behind it.”

  “Maybe he was the one she saw in Vung Tau. You said someone had frightened her, the day before she left.”

  “Yes. Or she saw someone else who recognised her. From the past, I mean. And that someone passed on the information to him. I wish I could’ve seen my father before I go. Julie assures me his attackers will be brought to justice but that Le Dang Bah has been cleared. But I’m sure he’s involved.”

  Abbie said the file on Con Ma Nu was much longer and consisted mostly of lists of ambushes and attacks on American units, going back to the days of advisors; attacks, it was alleged, led or organised by her.

  “They don’t know her real name. Con Ma Nu means ‘ghost woman’, or something like that. They are particularly bitter about her because for years she was trusted. It took American intelligence some time to realise that a woman of such humble background could be so influen
tial and so treacherous.”

  I thought about the few times I had seen Con Ma Nu, the unflappable yet intense attention she had given her sister on the night of Lin’s death, the quiet strength I had sensed even as she spoke to Abbie in a crowded street. The same quiet strength I had seen in her sister, though with Lin there was a warmth as well. Fanaticism was something I had never seen before, a life given to a cause, consumed by the war, the struggle, until, with Con Ma Nu at least, there was nothing else to her, nothing else to see.

  “What made her like that? Where’d she get the scar?”

  Abbie shook her head. “They don’t know. They’re just glad she’s got it. There’s no mention of any personal life at all. My father says America makes the mistake of judging these people from a western perspective. They don’t understand that dying for their country is more than just honourable. For them it’s like a religion. The more of their blood spilt on their soil, the closer is their bond with it, which makes for a strange paradox. The more of them the American Army kills, the further they are from victory over them.”

  “Did your father get this from Lin?”

  “Yes. And Julie says it ignores all those people who would appreciate an American victory, and their treatment at the hands of the communists. But it shows how close he and Lin were. How committed they were to each other in more ways than I ever realised. And now, I must save their baby, and get her home, while her father is not able. Before..”She looked around but everybody in the restaurant was preoccupied with each other. “You know. We are definitely pulling out. Leaving it to local forces. ‘Vietnamisation’ they’re calling it, and ‘withdrawal with honour’ is the catch-cry. Now there’s another paradox. That one designed for public consumption.”

  She took up her coffee cup again. What was left must have been quite cold but she didn’t notice. She was too full of tomorrow, the excitement of getting her half-sister away from the war. She looked pensive for a moment before she went on quietly.

  “You know, my ... ex friend said once, that if America loses this war some good might actually come of it, for us I mean. We might learn some humility. Withdraw a little from the world. Get back some innocence. To use a literary allusion, we might rediscover some of our Huckleberry Finn origins. Be less like Captain Ahab, trying to strike the sun, trying to be God. When you’ve been on the mountain top for long enough you can start to think you might be God. Sorry. I’m raving, aren’t I?”

  Sun-striking Captain Ahab had lost me a little, but I knew what humility was and it seemed to me that the few Americans I had met were humble enough, including her, for all her confidence. I once asked a GI in a bar what he thought of his government at that point. There had been reports of withdrawal and I imagined I was being clever.

  “It’s not an easy situation,” he said seriously. “The communists are a slippery foe. But I guess the government’s doin’ a pretty good job.”

  His modest faith stopped me. Their disillusioned graffiti said little about pride too. The generals might talk the war up, but the average soldier on the ground was as far from any mountain top as anyone could be.

  “I really hope you can make it tomorrow. My plane leaves at ten o’clock.”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes, short of shooting a certain sergeant, but I can’t promise.”

  The band had started a song called Make It with You. I wanted to reach over and take her hand.

  “You know, Julie even told me things about herself.” I made my feelings obvious but she insisted. “No, it’s interesting. She was once married. To an army officer, while she was in Germany. She was hurt. I think he was fooling around and she was the last to know. She was in Germany to improve her German and started working there for the army and moved into the diplomatic service. When her marriage broke down she moved away to make a new start and decided to pick the hot spots. To lose herself in her work, I guess, that sort of thing. But I’m sure she still carries a torch for this guy in Germany.”

  “And now she doesn’t trust soldiers. Any soldiers.”

  “Maybe. But it makes you think. Maybe we’re all here for some crazy reason or other.”

  “Maybe.”

  She smiled at me and I thought she was beautiful. “What’s your crazy reason for being here, papa san?”

  “Me? You mean you don’t know? I was sent here to watch over you. I’m your guardian angel.”

  The band sang. “Heh, have you ever tried? Really reaching out for the other side?”

  I reached across and took her hand. “Let’s move tables. Go outside.”

  “We’re not supposed to move.”

  “We’d only be changing tables and it looks so much cooler out there. Besides, we might never see each other again. This time for real.”

  “How long do we have?”

  “Just a couple of hours. It’s going on for nine.”

  When I managed to attract the waiter again he was reluctant to agree until I offered him ten dollars. I started at five. The three of us looked around for the maitre de and then moved outside. I went straight for a table in the darkest corner. The waiter complained about reservations but I ignored him, pulled out a chair for Abbie and he gave up and went to get my beer. I moved my chair in closer to her.

  “I hope this doesn’t get us into trouble with Julie.”

  I took her hand. “Who’s Julie?” The waiter arrived and I sat back and drank some beer.

  “In case you can’t get there tomorrow, we must exchange addresses so we can write. Will you give me your home address?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I don’t give my address to just anyone. First you have to kiss me.”

  “I already have. Don’t you remember?”

  “That didn’t count.”

  “I thought I felt the earth move.”

  “That was Arkansas’s tree house, swaying in the breeze.” I moved towards her.

  She looked around. “My God. This is a restaurant.” But she was smiling. As we kissed I brought myself in closer to her and knocked the table. The beer glass toppled over and I grabbed it as it rolled towards the edge. I swore. She laughed.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “What? We could be drawn and quartered just for moving out here.”

  “We’ve got over two hours. Let’s find a place. A private place, Abbie. Just for once. Just the two of us.”

  “But this is Saigon. You told me once that it’s dangerous to be out and about in this city.”

  “That was then. We’re old hands at it now.”

  “Some guardian angel. What about the head waiter? The manager?”

  “They’re too busy making money out of American officers even to notice that we moved out here.”

  She looked around. She still had one hand on my shoulder and the other on my leg. I kissed her again. “You’re beautiful. Come here.”

  She looked around coyly and then moved across to sit in my lap and sighed as she kissed me. A young officer and his girlfriend were grinning at us through some foliage from the other side of the patio. For a moment I felt like they might burst into spontaneous applause.

  “Come on,” I said.

  “Where to?”

  “The Continental.”

  “Again?”

  “Well, where else? That’s all we know.”

  I took her hand and led her to a bamboo fence low enough for me to step over. I picked her up and carried her. She probably could have stepped over if I’d helped her but it was an excuse to hold her. Hand in hand we made our way down an alley until, once again, we were in the hot, noisy streets of Saigon.