Play the Red Queen

by Juris Jurjevics

  “And when the charge didn’t go off,” I said, “he switched to grenades. We got him with, what, fifteen strapped to his chest?”

  “That sweet-looking boy,” said Captain Deckle, “had already killed eight Vietnamese and was drawing a bead on a member of President Kennedy’s cabinet.”

  “Does Counselor Nhu still want him in front of a firing squad?”

  “Badly.”

  Ngo Dinh Nhu, President Diem’s loathed and feared younger brother, had nearly limitless power. He was effectively the country’s attorney general, head of its FBI, Secret Service and CIA, the secretary of state, and speaker of the House for good measure. Oh, and he controlled all the newspapers, too. Tall and gaunt, Nhu was the physical opposite of his squat older brother. Gary Cooper on a bad day. For my money, Diem was nuts and Mr. and Mrs. Nhu were evil shits who ran the country for their own benefit, lining the pockets of the business guys and generals who backed them, at the expense of everyone else. Brother Nhu squashed his political opponents like bugs. If he wanted the sapper killed, the kid was already as good as dead.

  “Except if the kid’s executed,” Deckle was saying, “the Viet Cong will reciprocate and kill an American prisoner they’re holding.” He handed us travel orders for Da Nang. “Check out the late Major Furth’s effects while he’s still with us. Then get yourselves to Da Nang and shake this collaborator. Do it somewhere private; wring the guy out. He’s the only lead we’ve got.”

  “Should we haul him back here when we’re done, sir,” I said, “or take him over to the Vietnamese turncoat program?”

  “We can’t keep him, no way. So be fast, be thorough. I doubt you’ll get a second go at Tam once the Vietnamese take charge of him.” The captain fixed us with his hombre stare. “Our betters are already in a twist about this Red Queen. If she manages to take out somebody prominent, that will really ratchet their knickers. They want the lady dealt with before she gets that chance. Questions?” he said, pointedly looking at Robeson.

  “Our orders, sir?”

  “Find her and do her—quick.”

  “Detain her, you mean?” Robeson said, even though he knew damn well what Deckle meant.

  The captain absently rubbed his slight paunch. “She’s in civilian clothes,” he said, “killing unarmed US soldiers in uniform. That ain’t legal. She’s not playing by the rules. You’re within your rights to shoot the bitch where she stands. Got it?”

  Robeson looked uneasy. “We ain’t one of Counselor Nhu’s death squads, captain.”

  I put a hand on his shoulder. Times like these, I remembered how many years I had on him, especially the three in Korea.

  “The laws of war say she’s not a lawful combatant,” Deckle said slowly. “If you detain her, it’s gonna be the same dragged-out business as her predecessor: arguments about her tender age, threats of retaliation. Und so weiter. So do unto her before she does any more of ours.” He paused to look us each in the eye. “I want this woman off my planet. Verstehen?”

  We exited Deckle’s closet and pulled Crouch’s meager file on Lady Death. The details didn’t make for light reading, especially the color pictures. The body of the second officer she’d killed looked like a white-chocolate Easter bunny with raspberry filling, its hollow head chomped open.

  I rummaged around in the file drawer on Crouch’s side of the desk for the ammo box where he kept the envelope with the first two Red Queen cards, the scarves, and spent shell casings. I carefully added the third card and took possession of the box. So much for forensics. It wasn’t like any of the JAG lawyers upstairs would ever be taking this to court.

  Chapter Four

  “Number one rue Catinat,” Robeson announced as we pulled up. “Home from the fields.” I lashed down the radio antenna. Robeson chained the steering wheel while he haggled with the street kids who controlled the curbside spot outside our hotel over the price for guarding the jeep to make sure our tires didn’t get slashed or stolen, our gasoline didn’t get siphoned off. Wherever we went, Robeson drew Vietnamese kids to him. To them he was a wonder with his Bazooka bubbles and African skin. Not so to their elders, who kept their distance, even though they could see how respectful he was, knowing not to touch the tops of the children’s heads where the sacred energy entered and evil spirits could suck out your soul.

  We got regular complaints from the hotel manager about paying the young hustlers protection money, but I didn’t care. With the street kids on the job, our vehicle wouldn’t get stripped, go AWOL, or get booby-trapped. Besides, extortion was necessary training for the boys’ criminal futures if they were going to survive the tough straits they’d gotten themselves born into. Their other options were few: the overcrowded schools turned away more kids than they accepted.

  We finished raising the canvas roof so they’d have some shade, and took in the glistening Saigon River just across the street from the hotel. The tide was out, the pylons exposed on the concrete dock that paralleled the shore. A couple of sampans lay on the bank, their owners asleep beneath makeshift lean-tos.

  The Hotel Majestic was curved like a boomerang, with the entrance at the bend where its two wings hinged. The ground floor of the stucco building was reddish-brown, topped by four pale-yellow stories. Turquoise awnings shaded the balconies and the ground floor’s tall arched windows, five on either side of the identically arched front door.

  Robeson breathed a sigh of relief as we entered the dim, high-ceilinged lobby. The Majestic wasn’t luxurious, but from our point of view, it couldn’t be better: the hotel hadn’t been commandeered by the Navy and remained privately run. We were some of its few military residents. That the Majestic was overstaffed suited Clovis Auguste Robeson perfectly. He came from one of the richest black families in the state of Louisiana and liked being waited on. Great-grandfather Robeson had started a small undertaking and burial business that made his descendants wealthy. By the time he took up final residence in his own cemetery, his was the largest black funeral business in the county and second-biggest in the state. His great-grandson Clovis should have been back at Shaw University in Raleigh, finishing his studies in funeral management so he could take it over. But the young man wasn’t partial to the field and had quit school to escape into the army. Same as me, except for the college part and the fat-cat money.

  Me, I spent my seventeenth summer with my bachelor uncle on his Pennsylvania farm, dipping live chickens and turkeys upside down into a metal funnel that worked like a garbage disposal to lop off their heads. In my senior year of high school, he started talking about my going into his poultry business. I joined up on my eighteenth birthday and got sent to the “police action” in Korea.

  The air-conditioning cut out as we plodded across the dark marble floor to collect our keys at the long front desk. As Saigon brownouts went, this was a short one: in a minute, the lights flickered back on and the ceiling fans above the club chairs resumed stirring the heavy air. Still, we were taking our chances stepping into the cage elevator. The printed daily schedules of brownouts and blackouts were completely unreliable. One second you had juice, the next you didn’t. We could easily find ourselves stranded between floors, sleeping standing up. But we were both too punked to make the climb, and grateful when the white-jacketed lift operator got us to the third floor. I did my best to ignore the insecticide smell in the hall as we dragged ass toward our rooms.

  “You all right?” Robeson inquired, lighting a joint and passing it over. “Still feeling feverish?”

  “Fucked up but functioning.” I took a hit and passed it back.

  Robeson unlocked his door and disappeared. I let myself into 302, hurrying to the big tiled bathroom to piss. Another Majestic bonus: the Western toilet worked. As did the bidet and the shower, although a mama mouse and her babies liked to keep me company whenever I stepped under the enormous brass showerhead.

  Like the mice, our aged barefoot housemaid Mama-san Kha wen
t about her business as though I wasn’t there, and thought nothing of popping in no matter how undressed I might be. She’d raise the toilet seat and climb up on the pedestal to squat and relieve herself while I shaved, or use the bidet to pee if I was on the throne. She had shooed away the other chambermaids to claim us, but otherwise stayed strictly in her zone: shining shoes, changing sheets, making the bed, doing my washing in an aluminum basin, hanging my drip-dry shirts and slacks in the shower. To keep away mold, she kept the electric light burning in the armoire, and left me a daily bottle of potable water for brushing my teeth or rinsing the city’s grit out of my eyes. Clovis and I loved our irascible Mama-san. By garrison standards, she had us living like kings.

  The hit of dope had melted the muscles in my neck and shoulders. I hung my dog tags and room key on a hook and threw open the balcony doors. Across the narrow three-hundred-yard waist of the Saigon River stood warehouses and grubby factories. Beyond them nothing but marsh. Downriver to the right, the smokestacks and bridge of a departing ship passed into the Long Tau channel that snaked south along the edge of the huge tidal marsh all the way to the sea. The river’s edge was dotted with wooden shacks, their backs propped on stilts. Small boats lay stranded on mud and sewage; the tide had borne most of the raw waste toward the bayou. High tide would carry it back.

  I must have drifted off because Robeson’s loud knocking woke me. I stumbled over an armchair to let him in. After I showered, we headed for a local food counter on the street where a small sign advertised món Ăn Đặc biệt —“special dish,” meaning grilled dog meat on skewers. Mama-san Kha had urged us to try it. Yellow dog tasted best, she insisted, especially the ones with speckled tongues. She was right.

  We squatted on low stools under a tarp while the proprietor turned strips of frog meat and threw the ugliest water creature I’d ever seen onto the grill. Elephant-ears fish, he called it. Swear to God, looked like a piranha with dentures, but it tasted great. Robeson swatted away flies while I ordered us cold bottles of Coke. He winced at the first sip. “Damn knock-off. Tastes like cough medicine.” I downed half my bottle. I couldn’t tell the difference anymore.

  The overcast sky blackened and opened with a rare flash of lightning. My bum knee hurt. The end of Saigon’s monsoon season was just about upon us. Warm rain bucketed down, pelting the tarp. A stream hit my back and raced for my ass crack, which actually felt good. The quick downpour weakened and stopped. The ground steamed, making the air thick as a sauna’s.

  “This Red Queen situation is choice,” Robeson said. “A city the size of Saigon and we don’t have even a rough idea where she’s gonna strike next, much less a real police force to go after her with.”

  “And suppose we knew and were there waiting for her? We’d stand out way too much. She sees us, she just rides on by and hits somebody else somewhere else.”

  “No wonder Crouch dropped this mess on us.” Robeson exhaled his exasperation.

  Freddie Crouch was a Class-A prick. Whenever he got drunk we had to hear about the VC he “almost” got when he was out in the field advising. Except the truth was the kid had hauled ass bare-assed, leaving behind only his pants. What a battle—what a victory. We even heard the Charlie’s Mama-san hit Crouch in the face with some cow shit. More power to her.

  “Motherfuckin’ Crouch,” I said, and we clinked bottles. “While we’re here drinking somebody’s half-assed idea of a Coke you can bet the Red Queen’s commissars are toasting her with the good stuff.”

  “You gotta give it to her. She’s gutsy, that woman, going after targets in public places.” Robeson blotted his wet hair with a napkin. “She don’t seem to worry about anybody drawing down on her.”

  I set down my bottle. “The government may not like us walking around their capital strapped, but for damn sure a lot of guys are gonna carry from here on. Things might not go so smooth for her next time.”

  “But you’d have to see her coming,” Robeson said. “Small chance of that. Bang and she’s gone. No time to react. Even if some onlooker gets his piece out in time, she picks crowded streets. No way to fire without hitting bystanders.”

  “We need to find her before she rolls up on her next target.”

  “And we ain’t got the manpower to flood a block, much less a whole district.”

  He was right, of course. The odds of us finding her in Saigon were less than lousy.

  “Remind me to leave some cow shit in Crouch’s desk,” I said.

  Full and lazy, we flagged a Lambretta for the short ride to the hotel. The elevator operator let Robeson off on three but I felt restless and continued up to the partially enclosed saloon-restaurant on the roof terrace.

  The sun was burning into the canals and marshes to the west. Speckled turquoise geckos were congregating around the sconce lights on the wall, working on their first course. At the far end of the bar a bunch of raucous Aussie construction men were knocking back martinis and tossing olives into one another’s mouths. A dark-skinned brunette and a pale young thing with fiery red hair sat on either side of the junior banker who lived on four. Both round-eyes were lookers.

  I took a stool next to Lieutenant Nick Seftas and ordered a rum and Coke, but had to settle for a Sarsi sarsaparilla and rum. Seftas wasn’t staying long, he said. He needed to be fresh for the morning’s planeload of congressmen he was welcoming on behalf of General Harkins, MAAG’s commanding officer.

  General Harkins lived in what Seftas liked to call the Hawaiian Room: a happy can-do state, completely out of touch, that caused you to insist against all indications that everything was swell and getting sweller. Paul Harkins was personally convinced the recent Viet Cong surges would subside, and that he’d be sending a thousand American boys home by Christmas. He’d promised the same thousand-man hump a year ago last May. Said we’d all be out of Viet Nam by last Christmas. Head in the sand, hell. Harkins would need a Rome plow to pull his head out of his ass.

  Meanwhile Nick Seftas spent his days playing tour guide for VIP visitors: mayors seeking out local boys among the advisors and support detachments, governors eyeing higher office, senators and their staffs searching for insights on the guerilla war at hidden brothels and underground clubs.

  “They’re pouring in from everywhere,” Seftas said. “Congress, the Pentagon, Pacific Command in Tokyo and Honolulu, the goddamn Peoria Chamber of Commerce.”

  “Peoria? Sounds like hazardous duty. You putting in for the extra pay?” I enjoyed busting his chops.

  “This guerilla war’s a boondoggle. It’s fucking Fantasia: they never stop coming. The lefties opine that we’re helping Diem oppress the Buddhist protesters and prolonging colonialism. The right-wingers wonder why we’re not bombing China with nukes and Bibles. And don’t get me started on the actual Bible-thumpers. Got word today Cardinal ‘Moneybags’ Spellman of New York is coming to spend another Christmas with the troops and encourage his favorite altar boy—Diem—in his fight against the godless enemy.”

  “He came every Christmas I was in Korea,” I said. “Never heard him called ‘Moneybags,’ though.”

  “Seems His pain-in-the-ass Worship has the second-most valuable coin collection in the whole fucking world.”

  “Oh, yeah? He travel with any of it? I’ve been thinking of taking up coin collecting. Might be nice to pick up a starter set on the cheap.”

  “No problemo. I’m sure he keeps it bedside right next to his tiara.”

  I ordered another round as Del Shannon hit the high notes on “Runaway,” spun on the 45-rpm turntable by the cash box in open defiance of Madame Nhu’s music ban.

  “While the Dragon Lady’s away, the mice will play rock ’n’ roll,” Seftas said.

  “Madame Nhu? What’s she up to now?”

  “She’s been speechifying across the States, roasting President Kennedy every chance she gets. Left town with strict orders not to make any public pronouncements, b
ut you know they haven’t invented the muzzle yet that would keep that woman quiet. The White House is doing its best to ignore her, but the Republicans are loving her up. I hear her return’s gonna be delayed by a stopover in Beverly Hills for a little plastic surgery around the eyes.” Seftas yawned and slid off his stool. “Gotta shine my brass and hit the rack,” he said, and settled up.

  I looked around for my other regular drinking buddies but the patio was empty except for the banker, who had maneuvered the brunette and redhead to a table close to my perch and was working hard to impress them with his worldly understanding of Saigon.

  “The whole system’s corrupt,” he announced. “Every government department is its own little gift shop. Anyone with a rubber stamp and a little authority has his hand out for ‘gratitude.’”

  “How frightful,” said the redhead, all exaggerated and breathy. “I simply had no idea.” He didn’t notice she was having him on. The banker and the brunette were obviously into each other, so Red got up to leave, and—surprise—parked herself on the stool alongside mine. She ordered a vodka and tonic. “With ice, please.”

  I tipped toward her. “Wouldn’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Ice,” I said. “There’s a cholera outbreak.”

  “Neat, then. Tonic back.” Her accent was flawless Brit with just the tiniest hint of something else.

  I signaled the barman to give her a chilled shot glass from the short fridge under the bar.

  She knocked back her shot and said, “Guess my line of work and you win a drink.”

  I didn’t take her for a pro. Not a professional do-gooder either. More like some oil honcho’s flashy secretary.

  “Reporter?” I said. Sexier sounding than “flack for a petroleum company.”

  She shook her head but looked pleased. “Nadja Kowalska,” she said, extending her hand. A wide silver bracelet shackled her wrist. “I do for the ICC.”

  “International Control Commission.”