Naked in Saigon (8 page)

“I’m afraid, Connor.”

“I can’t walk away from this. I’m thinking Pultizer Prize, honey.”

“I’m thinking funeral, sweetheart.”

“I can’t let these guys scare me off, what kind of journalist would that make me?”

“A live one.”

He shook his head. “I can’t,” he repeated.

A thought came to the back of my mind and I tried to push it away.
If he dies I will be free.

Is that what I want?

“I’m going home, Connor, with or without you.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“I want a normal life.”

I waited for him to say something but he just bit his lip and shook his head.

“You’ll wait for me?” he said, finally.

“I don’t know.”

I remembered what he had said and the look on his face when he said it:
“I don’t know what I’d do if you ever left me. I mean it. I’d die without you now.”

“Don’t do this. Please.”

“I am not going to sit by and watch you kill yourself.”

“Just give me another two weeks.”

If he died, I would always know there was a part of me that wished for it. The only way I could sleep easy was by saving him from himself. I knew Angel meant what he said. What the hell was I supposed to do?

“I’m booking a flight back to New York tomorrow. If you love me, you’ll be on it.”

We sat there for a long time staring at each other across the table. Finally he got up and left and he still hadn’t given me an answer.

Chapter 13

REYES

He met Walt in the Givral for croissants and cafe au lait. Walt liked the place because it was air-conditioned. Even though he had worked in Asia and the Caribbean all his life, he was born and bred in Michigan, and he still wasn’t accustomed to the heat and sweat poured of him in rivulets every time he stepped outside.

He crammed the rest of his croissant in his mouth and shook his head. “You look like crap, Reyes.”

“Thanks.”

“No, I mean it. What’s up with you? I never seen you looking so hangdog. Is this about what happened in the bar?”

“It’s not the bar, Walt. I’ve spent my life dodging bullets.”

He nodded over the road at the Caravelle. “So is it her?” A beat. “Come on, Reyes, we’ve known each other a long time, let’s cut through all the bullshit. I hear you did look her up after all.”

“Since when has my private life been agency business?”

“It’s not. I’m just curious.”

Reyes wasn’t accustomed to talking about things that didn’t concern anyone else. But this morning he felt like he needed to talk to someone. “I guess I just wanted to see her one last time,” he said.

“Now, I ask myself what does that mean? Seeing someone one last time.” It implies unfinished business. I’ve known you a long time and you never go back.”

“This thing is never going to happen. I met this guy, her husband, he came looking for me. He’s a blowhard but he loves her, he’s nuts about her. I’m not even thinking about it.”

“You’re nuts about her, too.”

“I blew it. You only get one chance at these things. And besides, I don’t go stealing other men’s wives, even if I can. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of but I never did anything like that and I’m not adding it to my list of sins, it’s long enough.”

“Just tell me this, if he wasn’t around, what would you do?”

Reyes took out a cheroot from the silver case and lit it.

“I thought you’d given up.”

Reyes made a face. “I’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

“If he wasn’t around? If he wasn’t around, I’d chase her to the ends of the earth and try one more time.”

“Well you are in a sumbitch situation then, aren’t you, fella?”

“What would you do?”

“I never found anyone I ever thought about ten minutes after she got out of bed. I guess I’m not a romantic like you.”

“Fuck you,” Reyes said.

“No, I mean it. I’m almost jealous, Reyes. I never felt like that, not even once.”

“Well, I wouldn’t recommend it, not when it gets screwed up.”

“You were the one that screwed it.”

“No, I had help.”

“But you could have gone back, years ago.”

“I guess.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t like feeling that way, Walt.”

“What way?”

“She scared me. I knew she could hurt me.”

“She did hurt you.”

“Well I didn’t want to live like that, wanting someone that bad. It’s like walking through a minefield every day. I had my life the way I wanted it. Until she came back into it, I was doing just fine.”

“Well, sounds like the problem’s solved then, because according to you, she ain’t coming back. So what’s next?”

“I don’t know, I’m thinking maybe I’ll head back to the States.”

“You want to do me a favour before you go?”

“Whenever I do a favour for you, it starts to get expensive.”

“Then think of it as doing something for your country.”

“I don’t have a country, I have a passport.”

“Look, you know me, Reyes, I’m not like some of these other bastards here, it’s not a fucking crusade it’s just a job. And there’s times I get troubled by the things I see and hear.”

“What is it you want me to do?”

“Angel Macheda. Can you play him?”

“Why?”

“You know him, right? He knows you.”

“It’s not like a friendship, Walt.”

“Do you know why Angel is here?”

“You’re the intelligence service, I’m just an unemployed barkeep.”

“I hear it’s about the eight keys of scag that went missing. But is that the only reason? I need sources close to him, Reyes.”

“The Salvatore family were going to help you kill Fidel. They’re your friends, not mine. Why don’t you call Bobbo up for a pizza and ask him?”

Walt shrugged. “Well, I tried.”

“The one you should talk to is this Connor guy.”

“The one who married your ex?”

“He’s writing a book about the whole mess over here. Maybe he’s got some leads you can use. He sounds like he’ll do anything to bring Utopia a day closer.”

“He won’t work with us, you know that.”

“I can’t help you, Walt. I don’t know why he’s here. I find out anything I’ll let you know.”

Reyes finished his coffee. “Damn, that’s good coffee.”

“The secret is using good bourbon.”

“You should open a cafe.”

“The VC would blow it up.”

“Yeah, there’s always a downside to everything,” Reyes said and clapped his friend on the shoulder as he went out. Actually he thought he already knew why Angel was in Saigon and he guessed that Walt did, too. But getting the proof was the dangerous part and the fact of it was, he was through with putting his neck on the block for anyone anymore.

At three in the morning the air was still stifling. He felt a trickle of sweat run down his back. It was still another hour before the end of the curfew, but the rumble of military convoys moving through the empty streets seemed never-ending.

When he had first come to Saigon there was no curfew and the roar of trucks and tanks moving through the streets didn’t wake him up at night. It still looked like a little France then with boulevards of tamarind and lime trees and painted stucco villas with red tiled roofs and white porte-cochères. You could even still hear the sound of bicycle bells on the Tu Do. It was all very charming and it couldn’t last.

The carpet-bombing and American search-and-destroy operations had brought millions of refugees flocking into the cities. Nixon kept throwing more conscripts at the problem. The city was sinking under the weight of its street kids and army trucks, the tamarind trees were dying from pollution, and soon the whole place would look like Detroit.

He was still shaken from seeing Magdalena again. She hadn’t changed at all, unless getting even more damn beautiful counted as major transformation. He hadn’t expected that seeing her again would affect him the way it had. He thought at worst he might feel a moment’s regret.

Instead he couldn’t sleep and couldn’t think, and had spent the last forty-eight hours in an alcoholic haze.

What could he have done differently? Life was so much easier to live looking backwards. She was right--he could have looked for her all those years ago. But when you are younger you have your pride, and he thought he would get over her, like he got over every other woman in his life.

He had tried taking home bar girls, he’d had a few casual affairs, but none of these things pleased him anymore. Sex was just sex, like eating or drinking. She was different, she had made him feel alive in ways he hadn’t counted on or thought of and he hadn’t really felt alive ever since he left her on Comoros.

The first time he had seen her he knew there was something different about her. He had expected to win her over with a little patience, back then he always got the women he wanted. He even planned on letting her tame him a little; he had felt ready to give away his womanizing by then.

But it hadn’t turned out anything like the way he had planned. He had rules and he always swore he would keep to them; a woman was unfaithful once, she would be unfaithful again, and you never risked a second time. That was his rule.

But now rules didn’t mean anything, now she was married to someone else and he still couldn’t think of anyone but her. What a fucking mess.

The whole point of his life had been to not care too much about anything or anyone and always play the main chance. Now it seemed his life was pointless.

When he first came to Asia in ’63, he was still working for the Agency, running opium from Laos. He came back in ’65 and started up the
Nevada
when US servicemen started arriving, and it had paid off big time. Back then it had seemed like the perfect life for a man as dissolute as himself. Took him way too long to work out what a damned fool he was and by the time he changed his mind and went back to New York, he found out she was already married to this hotshot journalist, and so he stayed two nights at the Ritz and then went back to Saigon. He decided she was happy and it was best to leave her alone.

If it wasn’t for the VC he probably would have disappeared inside a bottle forever. The fixtures and fittings weren’t worth a goddamn, and if he wanted he could get out clean and start a new life. But no kind of life that he could think of appealed to him anymore. What he wanted was to be back in the Hollywood hills in the pool with the princess.

He reached for the bourbon bottle beside him. After all these years of not believing in anything he finally longed for something to really care about, one reason to make living worthwhile.

He closed his eyes, remembered once seeing a rice field golden under a dipping flat sun, cranes silhouetted for a moment by the sky. For all the bars and battlefields he had seen this one moment was somehow seared into his memory. It suggested the possibility of finally finding peace. He just didn’t want to find it alone.