Saigon Wife

by Colin Falconer

  “Some fix, huh?”

  “I’ve been in worse. We got lucky this time.”

  “How is getting captured by the Pathet Lao and strafed by your own Air Force lucky?”

  “I look at it this way, Connor. It’s like walking past a sleeping lion. You get past once - well, that’s lucky. You do it again, and that’s just about a miracle. You go up and drag on his tail and call him a lazy sunnavabitch and he eats you, that’s not unlucky, that’s just plain dumb.”

  “You trying to tell me something, Reyes?”

  “I think you got the idea.”

  “I was just doing my job. Someone has to tell people what’s going over here.”

  “You really think it matters? You tell people what’s happening, but if someone in the government says it’s not? There’s not a damn thing they can do about it. People wander about in the dark all their lives because they don’t care, or they can’t change anything even if they do.”

  “You wait, Reyes. Nixon and his cronies won’t get away with this forever. America has to know...how it’s being betrayed...by its own government.”

  He closed his eyes. That was the trouble with the Connors of this world: he’d rather save the world than save his marriage. Reyes thought he was asleep, but he was still mumbling, about Nixon, about heroin, about Vietnam. He guessed it was pointless to wish him sweet dreams.

  Six hundred miles away in Saigon, Angel paid a late-night visit to the Gia Long palace.

  He thought it looked like one of the casinos in Vegas, except it didn’t have a Chinese theme. There were high ceilings with massive chandeliers and his Italian leather shoes echoed on the marble floors. He was shown into the office of one of Thieu’s personal assistants, a white-uniformed Vietnamese Special Forces major called Nhu. He sat behind an enormous black lacquer desk, which was mostly bare except for an onyx ashtray and a tortoiseshell cigarette box.

  Nhu wore tight-fitting black trousers and a short-sleeved shirt of pale yellow silk. Angel thought he looked like a male dancer.

  And where are all the fucking chairs?

  “Your friend Mister Garcia is in Laos,” Nhu said without looking up from the letter he was writing.

  “Laos?”

  “He flew to Vientiane three days ago. I have checked with immigration.”

  “What the fuck is he doing in Laos?” But almost as soon as he had posed the question, the answer came to him. He was a strange one, that Reyes Garcia. “Thank you, Mister Loan,” he said and walked out again, feeling like he could rip the head off a chicken.

  They had dragged him all the way out here for something they could have told him on the telephone. But never mind, he knew what he needed to know. And now he knew what he had to do.

  Angel sat on the terrace, sipping from a balloon of Martell cognac, on a slow burn. He hated this damn country and he wanted to go home. He hated the freaky transparent lizards that crawled up the walls and he hated the way you put on a new shirt and ten minutes later it needed to go back to the laundry. He hated the food and he hated this damn house. It was like being back in Cuba but ten times worse. This morning he had found silverfish in his Ermegildo Zegna suit.

  He just wanted to get the family property back and go home.

  His eight keys of China White were still missing. At first he thought those three sergeants were in on the scam together, but he found out one had been in Hong Kong on R&R when his shipment went missing and the other one they tracked down hiding out in Cholon. He swore he didn’t have the briefcase, and his boys said they had been pretty damned persuasive. In fact, they had persuaded him to death and he still kept to his story, so that left only one option.

  That option had gone to Laos.

  He played it through in his mind. That bum of a sergeant must have had his eight keys with him that afternoon when he walked into the Nevada. His boys had tracked down one of the Marines who had been in the bar that afternoon, he said he’d seen him with the briefcase just before the grenade exploded, said he was behaving weirdly and that’s why he remembered him.

  So that meant someone took the briefcase out of the bar after the bombing. If they had tried to deal it he would have heard about it, which meant whoever it was still had it in their possession.

  Reyes.

  He told the boys to fetch him another brandy. He winced as another stomach cramp doubled him over. Christ, the food in this place was killing him. It would be a miracle if he got out of this country without catching some deadly fucking disease.

  And will someone tell those fucking crickets to shut the fuck up!

  A bat swooped in through the French windows. What the fuck?!

  He called over to one of the boys. “Sal, gimme your piece.”

  He watched it circle the room, following the whirling blades. What was this, it was like living in a Dracula movie. He fired and missed, fired and missed again, shattered the Louis Quinze mirror and the crystal chandeliers. He used up almost the whole magazine before he brought it down, and as it lay flapping on the floor he put three more rounds into it.

  When he had finished he was panting with hate and there was glass and bat everywhere. Sal had his hands over his head, that’s enough, boss, that’s enough.

  “I hate fucking bats,” Angel said, “They give me nightmares,” and he stalked out of the room and went up to bed.

  Chapter 35

  The Piper taxied back up the dirt runway and Bear jumped out. “Well, I didn’t expect to see you again, man!”

  “What can I say? I’m unbreakable.”

  “Did you find the guy you were looking for?”

  Reyes nodded.

  “He’s alive?”

  “He’s knocked around but he’s breathing.”

  “Man, you got to be kidding me.”

  Bear followed Reyes across the airstrip towards the village. Already, Hmong men and women were running towards the plane with sacks of opium on their backs.

  “We had a book running back at the club at Long Tieng, I got ten to one against you being here.”

  “How much did you put down?”

  “Ten bucks, man. Wish I’d laid out more now, but I figured by now you’d be shot to shit. Hey, I heard someone tell me this guy was married to that film actress, what was her name, Marion Montes?”

  “Madeleine. You remember her?”

  “I remember seeing her pictures. Had them pasted all over my wall when I was in Alaska. That lucky bastard. If I was married to her I’d be home cutting the lawn and getting home at five o’clock every night.”

  “That’s what I said to him.”

  Connor lay on his back in one of the huts, doped out with opium. His cheeks were sunken and his face with grey. It had been a long night.

  “Is this him?” Bear said.

  “He’s pretty beaten up. We’ve been trying to keep him comfortable with opium. It’s a bad break.”

  “Oh, Jesus. What a mess. Okay, let’s get him loaded and we’ll get out of here. If he wakes up, you make sure to keep his head down. I’ll be flying over Long Tieng.”

  “What about the cargo, he’s going to smell it?”

  “Tell him it’s molasses.”

  Bear went back out to the plane to supervise the rest of the loading. Connor opened his eyes. “What’s happening?”

  “We’re getting you out of here. How are you feeling?”

  “I need another pipe, Reyes.”

  Reyes tamped some more of the black paste into the pipe and lit it. The more doped out he was during the flight the better.

  “A man could get a taste for this stuff,” Connor said.

  “A lot have.”

  He gave him the pipe, watched him close his eyes in bliss as he breathed in the sweet, sticky smoke. “You know, I was thinking, if I get back to Saigon and she tells me it’s over, I won’t thank you for this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if she leaves me, I’d rather you left me in the jungle. I love her like I’ve loved nothing bef
ore. If you did this just out of some misguided guilt trip then I’m going to come after you with a fucking gun, man.”

  “Well you’ll have to shoot left-handed.”

  By the time Connor finished the pipe he was pretty much insensible. Reyes and Bear carried him out to the plane on a makeshift stretcher and put him in the back, on the studded metal floor. He thanked the headman and said a final goodbye to Tou.

  He said he’d come back and bring him a New York Yankees cap, but he knew that he never would.

  He climbed in and Bear taxied to the end of the runway. The smell of opium was so strong it would have anaesthetized a horse; the pungent jelly like black paste was leaking out of the sacks and onto the floor.

  As they took off Reyes reached into Connor’s knapsack and threw his camera out of the door. It was part of the deal he had made with Buzz: we’ll help you get him out, but you make sure he doesn’t get any pictures.

  He had given his word.

  Chapter 36

  The opium was wearing off. Connor groaned and tried to sit up. “Easy, fella,” Reyes said. “We’re almost there.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “We’re headed back to Sam Thong. They’re going to fix your leg.”

  Connor was awake, but his mind was still wandering in his opium-fueled dreams. “Where’s Magdalena?”

  “You’ll see her very soon.”

  “When we get to Saigon?”

  “Yeah, she’ll be there then.”

  “We had a fight before I left.”

  “Everybody has fights,” Reyes said, just wishing Connor would sleep, bird-dogging to look out of Bear’s cockpit, wondering how far before they reached Sam Thong.

  There was just the endless canopy of green down there. They were flying low, barely skimming the treetops on the ridges, occasionally he could make out a poppy field blazing in the sun.

  “Did I ever tell you how I met her?”

  “She published your books.”

  “It was at a publisher’s party. Before that we’d just spoken on the phone, just about editing, that was all. Then when I met her, I just couldn’t take my eyes off her. When I asked her out I thought she’d just blow me off and I’d lose the best editor I ever had. But she didn’t. I couldn’t believe a girl that beautiful would want a guy like me. I still can’t believe it sometimes.”

  “So why do you keep risking your neck like this? Why don’t you stay home and have a thousand kids and a house with a white picket fence?”

  “How can I, Reyes? This is who I am. I figured this is who she fell in love with. I stop being who I am, what’s left?”

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “Unless she never loved me in the first place. You think she did?”

  “How the hell do I know, Connor?”

  “You know her better than I do, right? You go back a long way, you two.”

  “You’re her husband, I’m not.” Reyes wished he would shut up. If only he still had that opium pipe.

  “I won’t let her go, Reyes. For you, she’s just another woman. But to me, she’s everything.” Reyes was going to sit up front with Bear, but Connor grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him back. “I thought it would be so much easier for both of you if I just disappeared. And I did, but you still came and got me. I’ll never figure that out.”

  “I can’t explain it to you, Connor. Don’t try to understand.”

  “I could never leave her, you know that? She’s everything I ever wanted. I’m sorry, man.”

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  “I don’t even care if she doesn’t love me, as long as she doesn’t leave, that’s all I care about now.” Reyes tried to pull away, but he hung on. “Don’t take her away from me. She’s the only thing that means anything to me in this whole fucking world. Please. Promise me.”

  Reyes nodded. “When we get back to the world, I’m getting as far away from both of you as anyone can get. It’s up to you and her, now. I don’t want any part of it.”

  “You mean it?”

  “You got my word.”

  He shook his head. “If it had been me, I would have left you in the jungle to rot.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  He tore himself away, crawled up front with Bear. “How far we got to go?” he shouted.

  Bear raised both hands, fingers extended, twice. Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes too long.

  When he got back Connor was staring at the cargo. “That’s fucking opium, isn’t it? Right here on a CIA chartered flight.”

  “Looks like molasses to me.”

  “Man, where’s my camera?”

  “Sorry,” Reyes said. “It spilled out when we were banking over the river.”

  “What?”

  Reyes shrugged. Connor sat up and tried to grab him, then screamed and clutched at his leg. “You’re not serious?”

  “You’re alive, man, what else do you want?”

  “That was the front cover of Time!”

  “It’s like any magazine, Connor. You have to get your material through editorial first.”

  He threw a punch with his good hand. Reyes swayed backwards out of the way. “Take it easy, fella.”

  “That was my fucking future! I nearly died for that!”

  “So did I!” Reyes yelled back at him.

  Bear twisted around in his seat. “Everything okay back there?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Reyes said. He grabbed Connor’s wrist and pulled his face up close. “Now you listen. There’s a few people did me some big favors to get you out of there. No matter what you think of these guys, no matter what I think of them, screwing them over is not part of the deal. Don’t look at me like that. You’re the big winner here.”

  All the fight seemed to go out of him.

  “You see that?” Bear shouted at him.

  Reyes straightened up. “What was that?”

  “I thought I saw something down in the trees.”

  “I didn’t see anything,” Reyes shouted back, but when he looked down there was a bullet hole between his feet. He looked up. There was another hole in the roof of the chopper.

  He stumbled to the cockpit. “They’re shooting at us!”

  Bear pulled back on the stick and climbed hard to port. The pitch of the engine rose to an agonizing scream. He twisted around in the seat trying to see where the shooting had come from.

  “Did you see that?”

  “I didn’t see nothing, man. Must have been some commie with a rifle.”

  Bear looked up at the bullet hole in the roof. “I told you, it happens all the time.”

  He levelled out again, pointed at the hills in the near distance. “That’s Sam Hong, ten minutes.”

  Connor was asleep again; the opium had kicked in once more. Reyes squatted down beside him, staring at the bullet hole. A few inches the other way it would have gone right through him.

  It wasn’t until they landed at Sam Thong that he saw the blood. There wasn’t much of it, it had pooled under Connor’s body and run along the metal gutters as the Piper rocked on landing. He rolled Connor onto his side and saw a single neat bullet hole just between the shoulder blades. He wasn’t asleep; he was dead.

  Bear crouched over him, he seemed more curious than horrified. It was nothing to him, this was Laos, and people died all the time.

  He seemed more worried about getting into the air again before anyone saw the cargo.

  “Well lookee that,” he said. “The Magic Bullet. What was I telling you, man? That is just shit bad luck. After everything you went through to get him out.”

  The medics had been alerted and were waiting with a gurney. A doctor leaned in and started examining the ankle. “There’s no circulation to the foot,” he said. “Looks bad.”

  Then he looked down and saw the blood. “Where’s the bleed? They told me this was a broken ankle.”

  Reyes didn’t know what to say. He jumped down onto the apron and walked away. He didn’t know how to feel about this,
he didn’t know how to feel about this at all.

  Chapter 37

  MAGDALENA

  “You must be Magdalena.”

  I looked up. A scruffy, overweight man in a loud shirt leaned over my breakfast table with his hand outstretched. I took it, cautiously.

  “Walt Winstone, I’m with the Embassy. I’m a friend of Reyes”. He asked me to let you know when I had news, so that’s what I’m doing.”

  He sat down without invitation, beckoned to the waiter, and ordered a coffee. He took one of her croissants from the basket in the middle of the table.

  “Are they all right?”

  “I don’t have the details. I just got a call from the Embassy this morning to say the plane had arrived at Sam Thong and they were both on board.” I must have stared at him for a long time because he leaned forward and tapped on the table with his knuckles. “Magdalena?”

  “Both of them?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  “Can you talk to Reyes?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. He may be on his way back to Saigon right now, I’m only relaying second-hand news.”

  “Because I think he may be in danger if he comes here. They both will be.”

  Walt pushed another piece of croissant into his mouth and grinned. “If you haven’t noticed,” he said spitting out crumbs, “we’re all in danger here.”

  “There’s some people looking for him, they think he has something of theirs.”

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin and nodded. “I knew he was lying to me.”

  “You know about this?”

  “Just instinct. Who are these people? Are we talking about the Salvatore family?”

  I nodded.

  “Well I’ll give him the heads up if I can. But don’t worry too much about Reyes, he can usually look after himself.”

  His coffee arrived. Walt reached into his pocket and fortified it with a dash of bourbon from a hip flask. He dabbed at his face with a handkerchief. It was an overcast, humid morning and his shirt was already sweat-stained. “I should ask for a posting to Russia. I’ve never liked the heat.”