The two Black Hawks were transport versions, but still had the two mini-guns manned. A half-dozen Secret Service agents piled into one. Frank guided Peter to the second one. Four seats had been arranged in the low-ceilinged cargo bay. His and Geneviève’s facing forward, Frank and Beat sitting backward to face them. The two crew chiefs made sure they were buckled in. They were small, even for Special Operations Forces. They had their helmets on and visors down, but he’d bet these were Sergeants Connie Davis and Kee Smith. This was Beale’s elite crew. He felt safer already.
They were barely buckled in before they were aloft. They had left the large cargo bay doors open, which was good. Even though evening was approaching, it was ninety degrees and about a thousand percent humidity. He’d been assured that even locals were wilting beneath the unusually warm weather for this time of year.
“Welcome aboard Army One, sir.” Mark Henderson greeted him as soon as he pulled on a headset. It was the proper call sign for an Army helicopter carrying the President. Though it certainly wouldn’t be announced to any Vietnamese flight controllers. “This evening we will be simulating a training flight to the mountains west of Vinh, Vietnam. We anticipate a quiet flight with the cooperation of General Chu Huang who created a no-fly corridor for this exercise. He did ask us to provide a special greeting to Ms. Beauchamp.”
Peter glanced over at Geneviève, who merely smiled at him. A glance at Frank and Beat revealed they recognized the name.
“Okay, give.”
Geneviève shrugged, “He was a cute boy. He used to carry my books in secondary school. But then he left me before third year for another woman. I was heartbroken.”
“Why would any sane man ever leave you?”
“You have never met Lê Mei, Mr. President. I must make sure you do not. She was so very beautiful. They are married and have a boy and girl, I believe.”
He tried to imagine someone more beautiful than the woman beside him, but could think of no examples. Then he caught the wistful tone of Geneviève’s voice as she spoke of the children. He didn’t know how he felt about that. With he and Katherine there had never been any question. Even when they were still sharing the same bed and he had thought they were happy, it was clear that she would never slow down enough to have children.
With Geneviève… It was not something they had spoken of, but he could imagine her with children. How would she continue her work, though? How would she do that if she stayed with him? The topic was becoming much too complicated, so he kept his mouth shut and put the thoughts aside to admire the view out the open cargo bay door. It was really too hot and humid to close it.
They climbed out of Hanoi, circling to the west. Vietnam was a sunrise country. All of its coastline, except a small area far to the south, faced the Pacific Ocean to the east. The sun rose from the water and set beyond high mountains. They were out of the city quickly. Even the suburbs surrounding a city of six million faded away soon into lush farmlands.
“I didn’t realize there was so much wetlands.”
“We are over the Red River Delta, a vast and very fertile region, Mr. President,” Geneviève pointed toward the ocean. “The coast is eighty kilometers away, yet Hanoi is only twenty-one meters above sea level, seventy feet. You really must do something about that. Do you know that only your country, Liberia, and Myanmar still use those English units? Even England has mostly changed over to metric.”
“I’ll make a note of that.” He admitted that it was ridiculous, but knew it was a battle not worth fighting. Perhaps in his second term when tilting at impossible windmills was considered eccentrically permissible for the Commander in Chief. He looked down upon miles of lakes, rivers, and streams and fields. “There must be tens of thousands of bridges.”
“More, I am sure, though I have never counted.”
As the farmland decreased, the lush vegetation increased, soon the jungle was underlain by sharp ridges like none he had ever seen. As if the countryside was an entire mountain range, the valleys of which had been filled in by millions of years of silt. That, he speculated, was exactly what had happened. It made for a strange mix in his head. Homo sapiens had arrived here half-a-million years before crossing over to the Americas fifteen-thousand years ago. Yet, in sharp contrast, the land had a vitality, a life that sprang forth and covered the country.
The contrast of old and new should not have been surprising, but it was to him. Europe felt old and well contained, all so carefully groomed. Africa was ancient and weary, lost in arid wastelands and wild jungles. Here there was the vitality of a country constantly rediscovering itself, building itself anew, undaunted by past wars or more history than he could imagine.
The helicopter climbed up river valleys and over ridges.
“My family lives very close to Pu Mat National Park, which is the edge of the Highlands. We are at a hundred meters, though parts of the park are over a thousand. It was a rubber plantation that my ancestors started in the 1920s. When we returned after the Vietnam War, we converted it to coffee. It was a very large holding. One of the few that the North Vietnamese government was glad to preserve intact because of how well my family had managed it. We were welcomed back most kindly. We now own it as a cooperative in partnership with the state and the workers, and it is functioning very well. For example, Vietnam has a ninety percent literacy rate, better in the city, worse in the country. We pay for all of our workers’ schooling. My family has always done that, so now we have close to one hundred percent literacy among even our oldest workers.”
Peter looked down at the terrain. A wide river meandered through the low mountains. As they descended toward a large villa surrounded by tall trees, Peter could see the coffee. Hundreds of acres, perhaps thousands were covered in long rows of man-high bushes. A wide diversity of shade trees to decrease erosion dotted the hillsides like punctuation marks. Unlike the vineyards of France that climbed vertically up the slope, these swooped around the terrain like a living topographic map, vast level fields suddenly bursting upward as hills bedecked in horizontal wreaths of deep-green plants over red soil. He breathed in, half expecting a rich coffee aroma, instead tasting the thickness of the air so full of growing plants.
It was so beautiful, foreign yet familiar in some way, as if Geneviève had already biased him toward her country. She had biased him toward many things he had not expected even a few weeks before.
# # #
Peter stepped off the second helicopter into another world. They had landed in the front yard of the main plantation house. Tall, proud trees, that bore no resemblance to anything he was familiar with in the states, shaded the old plantation house. Even in the last light of day, he could see the mix of Western sturdiness in its two-story façade, squared windows and clapboard sides, enhanced with Asian details of ornate railings on the full-length porch, curlicues of the archway above the main entrance, and swooping lines to the roof. The siding shone a cheerful yellow. The roof was of dark, weather-worn wood shingle. What must have been a magnificent building a hundred years before had aged and grown stately rather than decayed.
He also couldn’t help but notice the immense quiet as he dragged off his vest and flight suit. At first he’d thought it was merely because his ears had become conditioned to the helicopter’s penetrating noise, despite the heavy headset. But as he listened, it was truly quiet. There were no cars, no busy Washington streets. Even Camp David, with its heavy patrols of Secret Service agents, was never so quiet.
“What are you listening to?” Geneviève came up beside him, but didn’t take his hand.
“The sounds of your home.” A late-nesting bird called in the evening light. Some distance off, he might have heard a horse whinny. “I’m not used to the quiet.”
“It is something I forget about. I only miss it when I come home.”
Despite their noisy arrival, and the sweep of Frank’s team, no one came from the house to greet t
hem.
“Maybe we scared off your family. I am a pretty scary guy after all.”
“Nothing could scare off my family, Mr. President. They wait for you to enter as family, rather than to wait at the threshold as they would for a guest. Come, we keep them waiting and I’m sure they are shaking with excitement.”
Peter was trying his best not to shake with nerves. It was ridiculous, but meeting Geneviève’s family was turning into a far bigger fear than he had anticipated. Now he could appreciate some of her anger when his parents had simply dropped in. Though, he could almost wish for a similar experience himself, in over your head and then done with it. He’d had over a week for this to build in importance in his mind until it was a near to overwhelming tidal wave.
Beale and Mark and the others would be staying with the helicopters to help provide security, so no help there. He was on his own this time. Mostly on his own. He had told the dozen agents and the SOAR assets that they could secure the outside, but that he would trust to the residents of the house himself.
He took Geneviève’s hand in his. Her slight resistance told him that would not be appropriate, but she would hold his hand if he needed her to. He placed her hand in the crook of his elbow, just as he had that first night at the National Christmas Tree, took up the gift he had brought, and they turned for the house.
As they walked to the house and climbed the dozen front steps, she told him some of her family’s history so that he would have something to think about while he was panicking.
“My mother, Adele, was five when my family was driven out of the country at the end of the French War and they returned to France. She grew up there with her father who could not remain in the North Vietnam of 1960, as he was pure French blood and they were killing all of the French at that time. He did return at the height of the American War. My mother was eighteen and gone to college. He spent five more years with my grandmother, but did not survive the purges that came after the war. So I never met him.”
She stopped two steps from the top to give him a moment and kept telling her story. He could kiss her for her thoughtfulness. He really had to remember how to breathe.
“My mother returned at twenty-five with my father, Henri, on her arm. They had me when they were thirty. She and Dad are very French, though they have been in Vietnam for almost forty years. Gram stayed here through the war. Even though she is a hundred percent Viet, we do not know how she survived the purges, but she did.”
They set off again and reached the top step. The wide porch sported many chairs from a variety of lineages, clearly a common gathering space. A waist-high stone Buddha greeted him at the head of the stairs.
“I thought your family was French Catholic?”
Geneviève shrugged. “Just because we are Catholic does not mean we can’t also revere Buddha.”
Peter was just taking a breath preparatory to knocking, when Genny threw open the door, leading him inside and called out, “We’re home.”
She was, but he was totally lost.
# # #
“These are my parents, Henri and Adele.” They traded cheek-to-cheek kisses and then quick hugs with her. They then each greeted Peter similarly, though without the hugs.
Geneviève had her mother’s hair and fine features, and her father’s length, that was easy to see.
“These are my sisters. They are both pills.” A pair of brunettes came forward. They showed none of their Vietnamese heritage. Both would have been taken as French natives, fair-skinned and round-eyed.
“I’m Helaine. That is Dr. Ngô Helaine, M.D.” Her English was American and reflected little of her native languages. “UCLA and University of Washington. And she only hates us because we are better than her. I work at the main hospital in Vinh. A hundred kilometers toward the coast. My husband, a doctor too, is in surgery. He sends greetings as he is unable to attend.” Her handshake was Western as well.
The second sister subtly hip-checked Helaine out of the way. “I’m Jacqueline and Helly is wrong.” Her voice was higher, making her sound like a Valley Girl with a pronounced French accent. She was also the most curved of the three sisters and had cheerfully curly hair and a tight blouse that revealed a fair expanse of cleavage.
“Gen-Gen hates Helly because when she arrived, it ruined Gen-Gen’s chance at being an only daughter. Gen-Gen hates me cause I got all the curves and she didn’t. You’re cute.” She made a show of actually kissing Peter much to his surprise.
Then she winked to show she was just teasing her big sister.
“You should stay. I’m a doctor too you know. Business economics from the Sorbonne and Vietnam National University.” Well, that belied the airhead image she projected. “We need another man here so that daddy can retire. How would you like to marry into the family business?”
She started to move in again, but thankfully Geneviève just shoved her aside with little ceremony. In revenge, Jacqueline stuck her tongue out at her big sister. Henri trapped his youngest daughter in a friendly headlock to forestall further rounds between the siblings.
Peter didn’t know what to expect of Gram Kim-Ly Beauchamp, but it was certainly not the woman who strode up as if parting the Red Sea that was her family. Geneviève had said she would be eighty soon but she certainly didn’t walk that way. The trim woman barely came up to his shoulder, but it wasn’t because she was stooped. She appeared strong, almost athletic, apparently just arriving back home from a day in the fields managing the coffee crop.
A black dog stood at her side, stout, strong, and not friendly looking. That must be Dais, which meant Bear in the Hmong language. Geneviève had described him as sweet, gentle, and a stone-cold killer when needed, though primarily of unwanted rodents. Wonderful. That made him feel so much better.
The woman who clearly ruled the dog wore sturdy boots that were well used, gray khakis, and a white men’s dress shirt with long sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her gray hair hung straight and long. Here was Geneviève’s stunning face and amazing green eyes aged, mellowed, and grown wise with time. Beauty, while it had touched on the other three women in the family, had mostly skipped a generation to land squarely on this woman’s eldest granddaughter. If not for the decades between them, Gram and Geneviève could be twins in all but height and the brush stroke of Adele’s finer features.
“So, this is your President boyfriend.” She folded her arms and bowed her head slightly to him. Her English was lightly French-accented.
“I am Ms. Beauchamp. I’m pleased to meet you.” He did the same obeisance in return.
She stared up at him for a long moment. The room went silent. Even the dog stood still.
Peter half wondered if Geneviève was holding her breath. He would wager that she was. That’s when he realized he was as well. Then he huffed it out and laughed before he turned to Geneviève.
“You’re right. Your grandmother is deeply scary.”
The others in the room laughed as well in understanding ways, though Gram’s expression changed not even a little.
“And it is a trait,” he turned to address the matriarch again in a more serious tone, “that you have very successfully passed on to your namesake.”
Still the woman looked at him. Then she spoke to the dog, “Dais. Zaum.”
The dog, who had been standing at alert and worrying Peter some fair amount, dropped to his haunches and his tongue had lolled out. He shifted from looking like a knee-high, angry, and dangerous bear, to a knee-high, not angry but could attack in a second, working dog.
“I think, young man, that you should call me Kim-Ly.”
Geneviève’s hand, somehow once again in the crook of his elbow, which had been clamping down painfully hard, abruptly relaxed, then squeezed again for a moment in reassurance.
“In that case, Kim-Ly, you must call me Peter. Especially as your granddaughter will not.”
#
# #
The meal had been long, and wholly untraditional. Mother had set the formal dining room, but Gram had vetoed that, declaring Peter as family, and they had moved to the big rough table in the kitchen. Genny had to fight back the tears. That Gram would so approve of him on first meeting meant that Genny was not going crazy. Of course, it meant… She really was not going to survive this day. She’d been able to feel Peter’s nerves, but been able to do little to help him as she’d been in an absolute state of panic since the instant he had suggested coming here. Throughout the evening, Genny had been on the edge of cheering, laughing, or weeping. Or perhaps all three at once.
It had taken mere minutes from their arrival until it was as if Peter had sat a thousand times at the family table. And Genny’s emotions were all over the map about that as well throughout the meal.
At least the order of the dishes made sense for a change. Normally at the Beauchamp table, there was no predicting what would be done and served first. They began with Jacqui’s Vietnamese spring rolls, wrapped in nearly translucent rice dough. They had beef Pho followed by Gram’s notorious Chicken Curry on Rice Noodles. It had left Peter so bright red and sweating so profusely that she hoped he didn’t have a heart attack from the spicing.
It was perhaps the best meal Genny had ever barely tasted, all the familiar flavors of home. Every joke that came even close to her relationship with the President made her twitch. She couldn’t remember from the beginning of one sentence to the end of it, what the subject might be.
Some remote part of her observed, So, this is what an American means when they say they are totally freaked out. How interesting. I am indeed totally freaked out. And that simple statement of fact about her emotions, well, it was freaking her out.
Jacqi swore that she’d made Bánh phu thê. Genny had searched the kitchen high and low for the South Vietnamese traditional “Husband and Wife” cakes so that she could throw them down the back steps. Instead, Jacqi had actually made Genny’s favorite, Bánh rán, deep-fried sesame rice balls. They should have been an awful combination when served beside Peter’s gift of American maple syrup-flavored fudge. But somehow, when combined with enough laughter and a fresh pot of decaffeinated coffee, they had tasted wonderful together.
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