Mike and Serena and le petit Gavin didn’t need transportation to reach the embassy. It was only a few blocks away. Carrying one bag of hand luggage each, they hurried up Tu Do, past the twin-spired red-brick cathedral and on to Thong Nhut Boulevard, where the embassy was situated.
Mike took one look at the crowds of desperate Vietnamese besieging the gates and walls and said grimly, ‘We’re never going to get through. Not at this entrance anyway.’
Barbed wire had been rolled along the tops of the nine-foot-high walls, and marines, M-16s at the ready, were standing behind the barbed wire, preventing anyone from scrambling over or swinging across from the nearby lamp stanchions.
‘What shall we do?’ Serena yelled, gripping hold of le petit Gavin’s hand tightly. ‘Try the Mac Dinh Chi gate entrance?’
Mike nodded, and they battled their way through a mass of desperate humanity. Many of those haranguing the soldiers on the wall were waving pieces of paper, shouting out that they were the employees of Americans, that they had been promised evacuation. Because of their loyalty to Americans the North Vietnamese would shoot them. The marines were deaf to all solicitations, she saw one marine kick his booted foot into the face of one youth who had managed to scale the wall, and another marine bring the butt of his M-16 down hard on a hand searching frantically for leverage.
As they fought their way towards the Mac Dinh Chi entrance gate her bag was wrenched from her hand. She was almost grateful to be relieved of it. There was nothing in it of great value, and without it, it was easier to forge a way in Mike’s wake.
At the Mac Dinh Chi gate a marine spotted them in the crowd and yelled, ‘Push to the front! I’ll haul you over!’
It was easier said than done. At the knowledge that a couple of privileged Americans were about to be dragged to safety while they were left behind, the crowd went wild. Serena felt blows raining down on her as Mike physically fought to make a passageway through for them.
‘Gavin!’ Serena gasped. ‘Get him to take Gavin first!’
Mike took hold of Gavin, lifting him shoulder high. The marine bent forwards, took hold of Gavin’s hands, and hauled him upwards. As he did so, Mike tossed his bag, and Gavin’s, high over the wall.
‘I have passport! I have passport!’ a Vietnamese woman was yelling frantically to Serena. ‘Tell them to let me in too! Tell them my husband, my son, both work for Americans! Both now in Bangkok! I cannot be left here alone! Tell them, Madame! Tell them!’
‘I’m going to inch open the gate!’ the marine yelled down to Mike. ‘Slip through fast. You won’t get a second chance.’
The gate inched open and from the pressure of the crowd around her, Serena felt as if the breath were being squeezed out of her body. Mike had pushed her in front of him and as the crowd surged forwards she literally fell into the embassy compound.
‘There’s a woman out there with a passport! Her husband and son both worked for Americans! You have to let her in!’ she yelled up to the marine. But it was too late. Mike was panting for breath, the gate firmly closed behind him, and the desperate hands clenching on to the gate’s bars went ignored.
‘Jesus! This is worse than anything I’d ever imagined,’ Serena sobbed, hugging a terrified Gavin close. ‘Those poor people! What on earth is going to become of them? I thought everyone who had worked for the Americans had been promised a safe passage out?’
‘They had, it’s a promise that’s going to be impossible for the Americans to keep,’ Mike said, putting his arm around her shoulder and picking up his bag and le petit Gavin’s. ‘Time has run out. Tan Son Nhut is unusable, and so there’ll be no evacuations from there. This whole process should have been started weeks ago, not left to the last minute.’
The embassy compound was thronged with Americans and third-party nationals like themselves, and with high-ranking Vietnamese. A landing zone in the embassy’s parking lot had been cleared in order that helicopters could land, but so far none had arrived.
‘There must be over two thousand people here,’ Mike said, wiping beads of perspiration from his forehead. ‘How many can a Huey hold? Fourteen? Sixteen?’
It was obvious that they were going to be in for a long wait before they were flown out, and they edged their way through crowds that were now orderly to find room in which they could all sit down.
As Serena was reflecting that she had been foolish not to have had the forethought to have brought some food and drink with her, she heard an American close by saying, ‘Christ! I thought I wasn’t going to make it at all! My evacuation station was in Huu Ngoc Street, and then we were told that no one was going to show there, that we had to make our way here. If it hadn’t been that they sent a bus for us, we’d never have made it. The atmosphere out there is definitely ugly!’
Serena spun towards him. ‘Huu Ngoc Street? Did you say Huu Ngoc Street?’
The American nodded. Panic seized hold of Serena’s heart. ‘Were there any Vietnamese with you? Did the Vietnamese leave with you on the bus?’
The American shook his head. ‘There weren’t any Vietnamese that I remember. Hell, why would there be? The house in Huu Ngoc was a strictly American pickup.’
Serena had known that. But the official at the embassy had assured her that with the documentation that Trinh possessed, it would make no difference. And if the helicopter pickup from Huu Ngoc Street had gone as planned, it wouldn’t have made any difference. But would Trinh and Mai and Kylie have been able to make it into the embassy compound? She remembered the desperate Vietnamese outside, waving passports, waving letters, waving all the pathetic pieces of documentation that they had believed would see them out of the country.
She turned to Mike, gripping hold of his arm. ‘You heard all that, didn’t you? She couldn’t have made it, Mike. I know that she couldn’t have made it!’
Mike looked around at the crush in the compound. To search it, looking for Trinh and Mai and Kylie was practically an impossibility. It would take far too long. Especially if she wasn’t there, because by then it would be too late to go in search of her.
He said briefly, ‘I’ll go back outside and see if I can see her. She may even have returned home if she thinks it’s truly hopeless. Or she may have had the forethought to go to Gabrielle at the Continental.’
‘Oh, God!’ Serena whispered hoarsely. ‘Be careful, Mike! Please be careful!’
He kissed her long and hard and then, without another word, he spun on his heel, striding towards the nearest exit, aware that at that precise moment in time, he was the only man in the entire city of Saigon that wanted to leave the American Embassy compound and not enter it.
The next few hours were the longest of Serena’s life. At five o’clock the first of the helicopters arrived and marines began to organize the two-thousand-strong crowd into some sort of order.
At dusk Mike still hadn’t returned, and her British coolness was fast beginning to desert her. She and Gavin had searched the compound time and time again, and had found no trace of Trinh, or of Mai and Kylie.
The clamour outside the gates had intensified to nightmarish proportions, and combined with it was the sound of heavy shelling in the city’s outskirts.
‘They’re not going to be able to get us all out before the city is taken,’ an elegantly dressed American woman said quietly to Serena. ‘If I were you, I would take your place in line, otherwise you and your little boy might be left behind.’
Serena didn’t care if she was left behind, not if Mike was too, but she couldn’t risk le petit Gavin being left behind. Very reluctantly she edged a way into the line that was moving slowly forwards towards the foot of the stairs leading to the embassy’s roof.
At about eight o’clock there was a loud explosion from the front of the embassy. Someone said that it was a hand grenade exploding, someone else said that it sounded as if a match had been dropped into the petrol tank of a car. No one knew.
Serena and Gavin were nearing the top of the six flights of stairs, and sh
e knew that if she stayed with him any longer, she was going to find herself on a helicopter, winging her way across the South China Sea, and not knowing where Mike was, or what had happened to him.
She bent down so that she was eye to eye with Gavin. ‘Listen, my love. I’m going back into the compound to see if I can find Mike. Whatever happens, you are not to move from here. You are to continue in the line, and if your turn comes to board a helicopter and I have not come back, you are to board it by yourself. Do you understand?’
He nodded. Although he was only nine, he already possessed his mother’s unwavering common sense, and Serena knew that she could rely on him.
‘These are your papers,’ she said, slipping his passport and identity documents into his inside jacket pocket. ‘Look after them very, very carefully.’ She kissed him lightly on the forehead. ‘I will see you soon. Either back here, or on an American ship far out at sea!’
He grinned. He didn’t really mind being left alone. It made everything even more exciting. And he couldn’t wait to board one of the helicopters and fly out into the darkness.
Serena squeezed her way back down the stairs and out into the compound. She satisfied herself that Mike and Trinh were not among those still waiting for a place in the line and then pushed her way towards the main gate. More marines than ever were now manning the walls, and the shouts and pleas from those outside were deafening.
‘Have you seen a New Zealander out there?’ she yelled up to the marine nearest to her. ‘A big, broadly built man?’
The crowd outside the walls was turning very nasty and the marine didn’t take his eyes away from it to look at her, but he shook his head.
Overhead in the purple-deep sky the whump-whump-whump of helicopter rotor blades battled against the sound of artillery and rocket fire. Serena wondered how many people there were waiting to be flown out, how many more flights would be able to be made, how many would be left behind when the last flight had departed.
Suddenly, scanning the faces of the throng in the street beyond the barred gate, she caught a glimpse of Mike.
‘That’s him!’ she yelled to the marine. ‘Can you see him? Has he someone with him?’
Despite the scores of hands gripping the bars of the gate from the outside, her own fingers found a place on them.
‘Mike!’ she yelled with all her strength. ‘Mike!’
He heard her, saw her. He was carrying Kylie in his arms, and Trinh was at his side, but she could see no sign of Mai.
The marines were yelling at him, leaning over as far as they dared, hitting out at the crowd with the butts of their M-16s in order to make a way through for him. She saw him reach the gate, saw Trinh’s terrified face, and then, before they could be hauled inside, the crowd turned on him. She saw one youth raise a club and bring it hart down on Mike’s head, saw Mike falter, drop Kylie, and fall.
She was screaming at the marines to open the gates so that she could get to him, but their attention was centred on the mob in front of them. Trinh was sobbing, grabbing hold of Kylie.
Serena seized hold of the person nearest to her, not knowing if it was a man or a woman, a Vietnamese or an American. ‘Lift me up!‘ she screamed at them. ‘For Christ’s sake, lift me up!’
Whoever it was obeyed her, and blessedly strong arms hoisted her high. She could no longer see Mike, but she could see Trinh and Kylie, and she shouted out, ‘Pass Kylie over to me, Trinh!’
Out of the corner of her eye she was aware that Mike’s unconscious body was being hauled up the side of the wall at rifle point by two marines. He was safe. There was only Kylie and Trinh to worry about now, and Trinh was already lifting Kylie up towards her.
The little girl was screaming in terror, but Serena had hold of her. With a strength she didn’t know she possessed, she lifted Kylie clear of the gate, dropping her down to safety. Then, sobbing with relief, she turned to grasp hold of Trinh’s upstretched hands. Their fingers touched, grasped hold. Stones were being thrown at them now, and one of them hit Serena’s left temple. She cried out in pain, blood gushing into her eye, still holding on to Trinh. A marine stretched his hand down towards Trinh, about to haul her upwards and in utter rage a Vietnamese who had for hours been beseeching the marines to allow him to enter lifted a pistol high and fired at Trinh’s head.
Blood spurted on to Serena’s hands and arms. Shards of Trinh’s skull flew upwards into the night air. She fell backwards and the crowd closed over her, baying for more blood. Baying for American blood.
Whoever it was who had been holding Serena lowered her exhaustedly to the ground. ‘I’m sorry, lady,’ he said awkwardly, handing her a handkerchief.
She pressed it against the cut on her face, looking at him for the first time. He was a big, burly Australian who looked as if he might be a construction worker.
‘Yes,’ she said numbly, and then, ‘Thank you.’
She bent down, putting her arms around Kylie’s shoulders, hugging her close, not knowing how much she had seen.
‘It’s time for us to go,’ a dearly loved voice said gently.
She looked up, and Mike was standing unsteadily beside her, his face ashen.
‘Yes.’ She stood upright, her arm still around Kylie’s shoulders. ‘Where was Mai?’ she asked. ‘Wasn’t she with you?’
Mike shook his head. ‘She changed her mind at the last minute. Trinh and Kylie went to the evacuation point alone.’
Above them a CH-47 Chinook rose from the embassy roof, skimming over the garden of the French Embassy that was adjacent to the American Embassy, and climbing away eastwards.
‘Let’s go,’ Mike said again, and heavy-hearted and sombre-eyed, he led the way back towards the line leading to the stairs.
It was two in the morning before they were finally evacuated. As they sat hunched in the helicopter, Kylie no longer sobbing, but whimpering softly as Mike held her gently in his arms, Serena looked down at the city below them. The roads converging on it were full of lights. The headlights of North Vietnamese army trucks. She wondered if Gavin Ryan was in one of them, if, in another few hours, he and Gabrielle would at last be reunited. She hoped so. She hoped some happiness would come out of Saigon’s hideous death throes.
She reached her hand out and lightly touched Kylie’s hair. She would adopt her, of course. She wondered what Kyle would have said if he had been able to see into the future. One thing she was certain of – he had always liked Bedingham. He would be pleased to think of his daughter growing up there.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Despite the mayhem in the streets and the deafening noise of artillery and mortar fire that was coming from the city’s suburbs, the Continental Hotel was strangely silent. There were no more journalists there, or if there were, they were conspicuous only by their absence.
Gabrielle removed all her western clothing and donned the loose black pyjamas of a peasant. Then she covered her vivid red hair with a black kerchief and topped that with one of the conical straw hats that all the local girls wore. She looked at herself in the mirror and was satisfied. All the Vietnamese aspects of her features had been accentuated, and she doubted if anyone would mistake her for a Westerner.
She slipped out of the hotel, making her way to her aunt’s house. Nhu, the sister of a man who had held the rank of colonel in the North Vietnamese Army, was waiting for the North Vietnamese Army’s arrival without the least trace of fear.
‘It will not be long now,’ she said, pouring Gabrielle a glass of rice wine and then turning the lamp on the table down low so as not to attract any attention from the looters who were already rampaging the streets.
‘No,’ Gabrielle agreed, so tense with excitement that she could scarcely breathe.
They were talking of different things. Her aunt was referring to the final reunification of North and South Vietnam into one country. Gabrielle was thinking only of Gavin.
There was very little sleep for either of them. Every twenty minutes or so there would be the sound of
helicopters flying in and landing in the parking lot at the embassy or on the rooftop. Then, after a short interval, they would hear them again, lifting into the night sky and wheeling eastwards over the city towards the South China Sea. In the early hours of the morning there came the sound of a loud explosion from the direction of the embassy. Neither of them could imagine what it could be.
The sound of helicopters beating overhead continued, and occasionally the sounds of shouting and screaming also reached them. ‘It is those who worked for the Americans,’ Nhu said quietly, ‘those who are going to be left behind when the helicopters cease to come.’
The helicopters came and departed with less and less regularity. Shortly after seven-thirty a Chinook 46, escorted by six Cobra gunships, flew from the roof of the embassy. After that there were no more helicopters.
Nhu looked tiredly across at Gabrielle. ‘They have gone,’ she said simply. ‘The Americans have finally left Vietnam.’
Gabrielle’s hands tightened in her lap. Le petit Gavin would be aboard a US ship now with Mike and Serena. He would be safe, and when they were reunited, he would be reunited with Gavin also.
Nhu raised the blinds on a bright, sunny morning, clean and sweet-smelling after the previous day’s downpour.
‘I’m going out,’ Gabrielle said, picking up her conical straw hat. ‘I’ll bring back some croissants for breakfast.’
‘And I will stay by the radio,’ Nhu said, tuning it to the BBC.
Gabrielle walked leisurely towards the central square. The city was transformed almost beyond recognition. There were no cycles racing down the streets, no Hondas, no blue and yellow taxis, no traffic at all. And there were no policemen.
Even the pavement outside the Continental was deserted. No flower sellers, no cigarette peddlers, no prostitutes. It was like walking on an empty stage set, waiting for the curtain to rise on the first act of a new play.
White Christmas in Saigon Page 70
