The Chinaman (25 page)

The knock on the door startled Morrison because he hadn't ordered anything from room service and he wasn't expecting any visitors. He was lying on his bed in a white towelling bathrobe, his hands clasped behind his neck. He sat up and looked at his watch. Ten o'clock. He'd been in no rush to get dressed because he was still waiting for instructions from Hennessy. Morrison had phoned him twice the previous day. The first time there had been no answer, and the second time he'd sounded strained and it was obvious that there were others in the room with him. Hennessy had told him to stay put and that he'd call on Monday. Something was wrong but Morrison realised he'd simply have to wait to find out what it was. The knock on the door was repeated, but harder and faster as if the caller was losing his patience. He felt a sudden rush of fear, thinking it might be the police or even a UDA hit-squad, but realised just as quickly that it was irrational, nobody knew where he was except for Liam Hennessy. Even so, he slid silently off the bed and padded to the door. He placed his hands flat against the wall either side of the door and eased his eye to the peep-hole. Even through the distorting lens he recognised her. She knocked again and he pulled the door open but kept his arm across the doorway as if blocking her way.

‘Sean Morrison,' she said, grinning.

‘Mary Hennessy,' he said. Morrison wasn't sure what emotions he felt as she stood in front of him. Pleased, for sure, but worried, too. Worried about what she was doing here. And guilt. Lots of guilt. And desire. Always desire. He'd never been able to look at Mary Hennessy without getting aroused, without wanting to possess her. There were other feelings too, regret, fear, sadness, all mixed up.

‘Aren't you going to let me in?' she said.

He stepped to one side to let her pass and then closed the door behind her. She was carrying a white trench coat and she dropped it over the back of a chair before turning to look at him, hands on hips. She was wearing a white blouse with the collar turned up at the back and a soft skirt, patterned with large yellow flowers, and there was a small black bow in her brown hair. She was looking at him with a mischievous smile, her head on one side. Two years, he thought. They'd gone so quickly, so quickly that she hadn't changed one bit. He didn't know how old she was because he'd never cared enough to ask. He knew she was at least a decade older than he was but it hadn't shown two years ago and it didn't show now. Part of him had hoped that if he went away for a few years he wouldn't find her so attractive when he came back, that age would take away the desire, the lust. Her brown eyes sparkled as if she'd read his mind. She walked up to him, slowly, her hands still on her hips. Even with her high heels she had to tilt her head up to look in his eyes. She stood close to him, so close that he could smell her hair, clean and sweet.

‘It's been a long time, Sean,' she said softly. She reached up and rested her hands on his shoulders.

‘I don't think you should be here,' he said. The voice didn't sound like his own, it sounded thick and hesitant.

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Don't you?' she said. She stood up on her toes and put her lips up close to his. Their lips didn't touch but he could feel her warm breath. He swallowed. Even up close her skin was smooth and clear. The only signs of age were the laughter lines around her eyes and they just added to her attractiveness. ‘Don't you?' she repeated. She moved her head forward, just enough so that their lips touched. She opened hers slightly, but that was all. There was no pressure, no urging. She wanted him to prove how much he wanted her, to take the initiative. Part of him, the guilty voice in the back of his mind that had told him to go to New York, wanted to resist, but he already knew that he was lost. His lips parted too and his hands seemed to take on a will of their own, moving forward to link around her narrow waist. Still she stood on tip-toe waiting for him to make up his mind. He kissed her, once, a quick press of the lips, then he moved his head back and looked at her and then in a rush grabbed her and pulled her tightly to him, kissing her hard, forcing his tongue into her soft, moist mouth. For a few seconds she remained passive, allowing him to invade her, and then she began to kiss him back, returning his passion. He grunted as she kissed him and he closed his eyes as the urge to possess her washed over him again. She slowly put her heels on the ground so that he had to bend his neck to kiss her and she tried to pull away but he put his right hand behind her neck and pushed her head against his.

She used both her hands to push his shoulders away. A strand of hair had come loose, curling over her left eye, but she ignored it. She held him away, bending backwards slightly and pushing her groin against him. He felt as if he was on fire between his legs. Her eyes flashed. ‘Tell me you want me,' she said.

‘You know I do,' he answered, and tried to kiss her, but she moved her head out of the way, pressing her thighs even harder against him.

‘Tell me you want me,' she said again. She moved her right hand slowly down from his shoulder and traced her fingernails across the hairs on his chest. He gasped as the sharp nails scratched against his flesh, parting his robe as they moved down between his ribs. She moved her hand lightly across his stomach and then down to his groin. ‘Tell me,' she urged and at the same time took him in her hand. She squeezed him gently and he groaned and surrendered.

‘I want you, Mary,' he said. She pushed the robe off his shoulders so that he was standing naked in front of her and pulled his head down to hers, grabbing his hair so tightly that it hurt, forcing her body fully against his. He lifted her up and she raised her legs, gripping him around the waist and locking her ankles together. Now there was only one thought in his head. Her.

Nguyen lay motionless and listened to the birds singing in the treetops overhead. He'd made his way back to Tollymore Forest under cover of darkness and found the van exactly as he'd left it. There were a few things he wanted from the back of the van which he loaded into his rucksack, and he took a red can of petrol. He rejected the idea of sleeping by the van in case Hennessy should send a search party to the forest. It was an outside chance but not one worth taking because if they surprised him there would be no escape.

He found a safe place a hundred yards or so away and rested until mid-morning. He sat up and leant against a towering pine tree, the air thick with the smell of pine needles. He was surrounded by thousands of bluebells, shifting listlessly in the wind. He spent an hour or so cutting off the heads of three boxfuls of matches and crushing them into red powder which he carefully poured into one of the boxes. He cut a three-foot length of plastic-coated wire and then stripped off an inch of the plastic midway along it. With the point of his knife he made a hole at either end of the matchbox and threaded the wire through, knotting it so that the bared portion was in the middle, in contact with the powdered match heads. He stripped the ends of the wire clean of plastic and then coiled it up, wrapping it around the box. Nguyen removed the glass front from one of the plastic alarm clocks he'd brought with him and put it into the rucksack with the wired-up matchbox. Connecting the clock, the matchbox and a battery in a simple circuit would give him a basic timed fuse which would be more than sufficient to ignite the can of petrol.

The gun he'd taken from the man in the copse was a Browning HiPower automatic pistol which weighed about two pounds. Nguyen ejected the magazine and counted the bullets. Thirteen. An unlucky number for the Westerners, but not for a Vietnamese. He stripped the gun apart and cleaned it, checking that the mechanism worked. It was fine. The gun had two safeties, one worked by the thumb and one by the magazine, so that it couldn't be fired accidentally. It was a serious weapon. It was too heavy to carry around in his pocket for long so he put it in his rucksack. The smell of roast pork reminded him how long it had been since he had last eaten so he took out a carton of meat and one of rice and ate with his fingers. It had been a long time since he had eaten outside. What was it the Westerners called it? He'd seen the word in one of Kieu Trinh's English story books. Picnic, that was it.

As he ate he worked out what he was going to do next. One thing was for sure, he had to confront Hennessy one last time before he took things a stage further and that meant going back to the farm. Now that Hennessy had seen how much damage he could do, surely he would be more co-operative? Put anyone under enough pressure and they would bend. Not break, perhaps, but certainly bend.

Nguyen sighed and lay back in the pine needles. He took no pleasure in what he was doing. When he'd left Vietnam he'd thought that his days of fighting and killing were over, that he'd be allowed to raise his family in peace. When he saw the last helicopter leave the American embassy in Saigon he still had hopes of escaping from the North Vietnamese and eventually living in the United States. He'd fought alongside the Americans and had seen hundreds of American teenagers die in the fight for a free Vietnam so he didn't regard being left behind as an act of betrayal. He could see what a difficult logistical exercise it was for the Americans to pull out, and he knew that he wasn't the only one to have been left behind. It was only later, when Thi Manh and Mai Phoung died, that the resentment burst like a septic boil and he vowed never to seek sanctuary in the United States. They'd been surprised at the refugee camp in Hong Kong when he'd told them that he would go anywhere in the world but not to America. Officials from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees had interviewed him many times and had explained that because of his war record he would be welcomed with open arms in the United States but he had steadfastly refused and had been equally insistent that he would not explain his reasons. He had told them that two of his daughters had died on the voyage across the South China Sea but never detailed the circumstances. In Nguyen's mind, they had no right to know. They were so beautiful, Thi Manh and Mai Phoung, and even now, after more than ten years had passed, he could picture them clearly in his mind, jet-black hair, high cheekbones, bright eyes and ready smiles, as pretty as their mother had been before the tough years had taken their toll. They had been such well-behaved children and it had been thoughts of them that had kept him going throughout his three years in the so-called ‘re-education' camps, working fifteen hours a day on a near-starvation diet, until the North Vietnamese were satisfied that he was a good Communist again.

There had been no doubt in his mind that he would be punished by the North Vietnamese but he had no idea of how severe that punishment would be. On the morning of April 30, 1975, he had slipped out of bed, leaving Xuan Phoung asleep clutching a pillow, and stood in the doorway leading to the alcove where his daughters slept together in a single bed, heads touching like Siamese twins. He stood there for more than an hour trying to imprint the scene on his mind, certain that it would be the last time he would see his daughters. The street noises had changed, there were no more helicopters whirring overhead, instead there was the far-off rumble of trucks carrying North Vietnamese troops and supplies into Saigon and the sound of cheering as the bo doi – the soldiers of the people – were welcomed by crowds of onlookers. In the early morning, while he was making love to his wife, Nguyen had heard tanks driving through the streets and the occasional rattle of machine-guns, but whether it was the North Vietnamese mopping up pockets of resistance or simply high spirits on the part of the victorious forces, he had no way of telling.

He dressed casually in washed-out cotton trousers, a faded checked shirt and an old pair of sandals. He'd dropped his army uniform in the street and he'd cleared all evidence of involvement with the US forces from their flat. They had made their plans long before the Americans pulled out, when it had first become obvious that there was no way the South could win the war. They had closed their bank account and transferred all their money into gold, knowing that when Saigon fell paper money would be virtually worthless. They had kept the gold in a safety-deposit box, along with several gold Rolex watches and pieces of jewellery that they had been able to buy on the black market with Nguyen's wages, and two weeks before the NVA arrived at the outskirts of Saigon they had taken everything out of the bank vault. They had already decided that Nguyen should go. It was the only chance the family had of surviving.

Xuan Phoung had friends who would help her to get a job as a kitchen worker and she would hide their savings under the floorboards until Nguyen was allowed to return, or until she got the opportunity to escape with the children. Before he left, Nguyen took a photograph from his wallet, a picture of Xuan Phoung and the two girls, and put it on the bed. He had carried it with him throughout the war but it would be dangerous for them to be caught with it now. He took all identification from the wallet, leaving only a small amount of paper money. It would not be long before a thirty-one-year-old man walking alone would be picked up for interrogation and anything in his pockets would be taken from him, so he left his wedding ring and his watch and his Special Forces cigarette lighter on the bed next to the photograph before kissing his wife once, on the cheek, and then dashing downstairs before he could have a change of heart.

The streets of Saigon were every bit as packed as they had been the previous night, but whereas the rush then had been to escape with the Americans, now the crowds were there to welcome the NVA. Children were waving NVA flags – red and blue with a gold star – and it seemed as if every shop in the city had managed to get a photograph of an unsmiling Ho Chi Minh in its window. Battered lorries covered with thick red mud rattled along loaded with troops, young men with baggy olive-green uniforms and rubber sandals, cheering and lapping up the attention.