William F. Buckley Jr. (21 page)

Moments later, back at the wheel of the car, Than Koo signaled. “My brother says the Officers Club is practically empty. Wherever General Nguyen went to call back the President, it was not there—”

“Hang on, Koo.” Henry trained his glasses on the car making its way to the entrance gate. It was very far from a presidential limousine, a simple sedan. The two guards leaned down to peer through the windows. But then they snapped to attention and saluted.

“Go! Go! Go! Koo. Quick! Quick!” Henry looked down from the window and saw his own car speeding off in chase of the suspect car that had just passed through the gates of the presidential palace.

He stood by the radio. In a few moments Koo was on.

“I’ve got them. They turned off Hoc Lac Street, onto Tran Hung Dao. They are heading toward Cholon. Driving quite slowly. They are stopped at a light right now. I’m leaving two cars between them and me …”

Than did not release the channel. He described the route he was following. “We are still on Tran Hung Dao. Driving about forty kilometers per hour. Traffic is easing up. Suspect car stops to let a pedestrian go by. Taking left onto Phung Hung.”

A few minutes later, “They’re pulling up. Don’t know what it is, the house on the side. A house on Tran Hung.
They’re getting out!
First two men have raincoats over their heads. The third man has rushed past them. He is opening the door to—I cannot read the number of the house. The two men have disappeared inside.… Mr. Henry, I think that was President Diem and his brother Nhu. No. I do not
doubt
it is them. I
feel
it.”

“What happened to the car?”

“Someone has just come out of the house. He is getting into the car.… It is driving down the road. Turning right. It looks like a small driveway. It is covered by trees. I can no longer see the car. I do not want to risk turning in to that road.”

“No, no. Now listen, Koo. Seems to me obvious they’re going to stay where they are for a while—if not, why did they go there in the first place. Now I’ve got to get back to my office, cable New York. Figure a half hour. I’ll approach to within a half block of where you are after I spot your car. I’ll bring food and something to drink. I’ll charge up my radio in the office, but will keep it on. Turn on the car radio low and keep listening in case there’s an announcement. You won’t hear from me for thirty minutes unless it’s an emergency. I have eight twenty-three. I will signal you at eight fifty-five.” Henry opened the door at the moment the tropical shower hit. He took off his seersucker jacket and improvised
a hat, charging off toward the street where he could hope to flag a taxi, or even persuade a Vietnamese with a motorbike.

Than Koo would do as instructed.

The telephone rang insistently at the winter house of Henry Luce at Scottsdale, a suburb of Phoenix. It was 6:30 in the morning. The housekeeper shook herself awake and finally agreed to knock on the bedroom door of Mr. Luce.

“What time is it?” he bellowed through the door.

“Six-thirty, Mr. Luce.”

He grabbed the telephone from the bedside table. “Yes,” he grunted. “Luce here.”

“Harry!” His Chief of Correspondents explained to a sleepy tycoon what was going on. In a matter of seconds, Luce was transformed into an excited journalist. He took in the story and then issued instructions.

“We’ve got one important decision to make. Whether to tell the White House. Can you get through to Chafee without any trouble?”

“Yeah, for”—Clurman looked at his watch—“exactly ten minutes. After that he plans to stake out the house where they’re hiding out. Only his interpreter is there now.”

“That’s no good. Tell Chafee to put off going back to his station until he has somebody standing by the phone in the office. Somebody with a radio who can relay my instructions. I’m not sure I can decide on this—decide what to do—in less than an hour or two. I assume President Diem will stay wherever he is overnight, with Nhu. I assume that, but of course we can’t be sure. But the interpreter is there, you say?”

“Yes, Harry.”

“Probably they’ll stay put. Now what I need is a telephone operator. Damnit, it’s only what, eight o’clock your time? Can you get through to the home number of one of the office operators? Tell somebody to get the hell over to the switchboard to handle my calls?”

“Harry, we’ve got six operators, and they’re probably all having a cup of coffee and getting ready to get into the bus or
subway to go to the office. There’s no way I can make them get in any faster than they’d get there anyway.”

Henry Luce was not patient in such situations.

“All right. All right, Dick. Get the switchboard to stand by for me at exactly nine your time. Now I want you to read all the cables from Chafee and from everybody else you can get your hands on who’s up on the Vietnam situation. Do our people know about the coup? If so, when did they find out? And if so, who is conducting the coup? Has there in fact been a coup, or is Diem just going into hiding?

“And what are our people in Saigon going to do about it? Are they prepared to look after the physical safety of the President?—
of course
, you won’t let on we know he isn’t in the palace any longer. Can we assume that some of the military will stay loyal to him? If so, do they anticipate an armed struggle? Are there any indications that the enemy might move if there is disorder?”

When Henry Luce’s curiosity was stirred he wanted to know everything there was to know. “What time will you be at the office, Dick, eight forty-five? Where in the hell were you at six when Chafee tried to get you. Duck hunting? Hmm. Don’t suppose you know how to work a switchboard.… Here’s an assignment for you. Round me up the home telephone numbers of McGeorge Bundy, Bob McNamara, Averell Harriman, Ted Sorensen—What? Slow down?” Henry Luce puffed at his cigarette. “Yes, okay. McNamara … Harriman … Sorensen—Bobby? No. If it comes to that I will talk to the President myself. And yes, the home telephone number in Saigon of Cabot Lodge. I’ll talk to you at eight forty-five. The White House number, that’s 456–1212, right? Yes. Goodbye.”

The housekeeper brought in coffee. Henry Luce called the White House. “This is Henry Luce. I’m calling from my number in Phoenix. You have it. I want to talk to Secretary Rusk. I know how these things are, I know, I know. Just you call him, tell him I need to speak to him on an emergency matter, give him my number. Thank you.”

He put down the telephone. Five minutes later it rang. “Mr. Luce?”

“Yup.”

“This is Virginia Rusk. Dean spent the night in Atlanta and should be on the way to his plane now, because he’s due here before lunch. The White House can probably put you through to SAM-118 as soon as he gets to the airport.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll take it from here. Thank you very much, Mrs. Rusk. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

He swigged down his coffee. Might as well take a shower. Can’t call Clurman back for—twenty-three minutes.

At noon Eastern Standard time, the conference call was in place. Henry Luce in Phoenix, Richard Clurman in New York, Henry Chafee in Saigon.

Luce took the floor.

“All right. Chafee?”

“Yes, Mr. Luce.”

“For security, we will refer to ‘Subject.’ You’re telling us—I’ve read your cable—that Subject is asking for a guarantee for his physical security and his brother’s. Does Lodge know that?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t told him. I don’t know whether General Nguyen passed out the information, or maybe one of the people who heard about it from him.”

“Does anybody at our embassy know that Subject has left the palace?”

“Again, I don’t know. I don’t think General Nguyen knew Subject was skipping out, because our man heard the general promising to call him back
at
the palace. Now maybe he did, and maybe Diem—Subject—is following the general’s instructions. Maybe the guy who drove him to the safe house is acting on military orders, maybe acting for the general who pulled off the coup—if it has been pulled off.”

“Your cables tell us it’s been all over Saigon for weeks that the White House is encouraging a coup. They don’t tell us whether Kennedy-Rusk-Lodge have done anything about the physical security of—of Subject. Know anything about that?”

“No. No, sir, I do not.”

“Dick?”

“Yes, Harry.”

“This is a hell of a situation. If we let Lodge know where he is, does that a) increase Subject’s chances of getting away? or b) diminish those chances? If Lodge fingers him, somebody has to go rescue Subject. I can’t believe Lodge wants to shelter him and … brother … in the U.S. Embassy. So if Lodge gets into the act, he’d have to protect him without offering diplomatic sanctuary. But that may be a lot harder to do if he knows where Subject is than if he
does not
know. What you think?”

“I think, Harry, we’ve got to tell the White House—”

“Tell the White House what? That Subject is out of power? Or tell the White House that he’s out of power and hiding in a house known only to
Time
magazine’s Saigon correspondent?”

“Begin by telling the White House that in case they haven’t heard, President Diem has been overthrown.”

“How does that advance U.S. interests?”

“Harry, the White House will want to have it both ways. They’ll want to say they had nothing to do with it. And then they’ll want to wave to the new Administration—Big Minh, you agree?—and to the Buddhists and to the hate-Diem crowd, which is much of the world, and say, Look how smoothly we Americans can handle the situation when it gets out of hand! Look what we did to Lumumba! Look what we did to Trujillo! Henry—Henry Chafee—is it your impression that the Lodge crowd want Diem killed?”

“That is my impression. It would be simply more convenient. With Diem still alive, his whole establishment in South Vietnam is still alive, and potential avengers of the government in power. Yes, he’d prefer Diem dead, but Lodge isn’t going to line up a firing squad.”

“Where exactly are you now?”

“It’s near one-thirty. I’m at a bar a couple of blocks from House X. We’ve taken over the bar, made a deal. The bar owner is a lot richer. I’m wearing out, but my man and I are taking watches, one of us snoozing in the back of the car, the other at the wheel.”

“What happens when your bar closes?”

“Mr. Luce, the bar won’t close to your Saigon correspondent. I’ve made all-night arrangements with him.”

“Good. Call this number, my number—602-555-8738—at, er, call it two hours from now. Got that?”

“Yes, Mr. Luce.”

“But, obviously, if Subject goes somewhere else, call in as soon as
that
happens.” Henry closed his eyes, committing the telephone number to memory. He had lost all desire for sleep. He could not imagine that he’d sleep again.

But Than Koo had dozed for an hour. Now he got out of the car and opened the door to the driver’s seat. “Your turn, Mr. Henry.”

“Get in the other side, Koo. I’ve been thinking.”

The nearest street lamp was on the left. The house they were watching was opposite it, thirty or forty meters down the street, its dull yellow paint all but covered by the leaves and ivy that shrouded it. The traffic was very light, one car every fifteen or twenty minutes. There was no sign of police or military.

“Koo,” Henry said, “you should go to the telephone in the bar—I’ll bring you in, give an okay to the bartender to let you stay, use the phone, etc. Call your brother. If he’s not on duty, call him at home. It’s been six hours since we’ve been in touch with him. I can’t believe there hasn’t been military traffic in the club during the last few hours. After that, call Tran Tuyen. He’s been pretty valuable to us in the past. See if he has anything. Okay?” Henry knew that Koo did not relish talking to Tran, whom he considered as something of a rival informant. But he would of course do so.

Koo was gone twenty minutes. He sat down on the front seat by Henry. “You’re right. Tri said a lot of officers started coming in just after our call. There was a lot of drinking, a lot of yakking. He heard every kind of rumor, heard there was a countercoup, General Minh arrested, heard Lodge had flown out of the country, heard Diem had flown north. Heard everything.

“But then I got hold of Tran Tuyen. He has one very specific piece of information. At seven forty-five last night—that would be less than a half hour before he left the palace—Diem called your friend Colonel Conein.” Than Koo’s reference was to the CIA colonel who occupied the office opposite Henry’s. “Said he wanted safe passage out of the country and who if not the CIA would provide it? Tran says apparently Conein stalled, said that to fly Diem out, CIA would need to bring in a jet transport from Guam, and that that operation would take twenty-four hours. Diem said to Conein over the phone, ‘Twenty-four hours is too long.’ ”

Koo paused. “Sounds to me like the CIA doesn’t want to get involved in an escape operation. Diem figured out they were closing in on him and decided to go to—well, to come here.” He pointed offhandedly to the yellow house they were covering.

Henry Chafee was silent. “I’ll try”—he knew he had to try—“to sleep for an hour, before it’s time to call New York. Call Phoenix, I mean.” He opened the door and moved into the back of the car. He closed his eyes, but did not sleep.

“All right. Dick?”

“Here, Harry.”

“Chafee?”

“Here, Mr. Luce.”

“What time is it there?”

“Just after seven. It was dawn a few minutes ago.”

“No movement?”

“No movement.”

“Well, I’ve talked to everybody involved. Just about everybody. Haven’t talked to the President, don’t need to. Your cables are on the mark, Chafee. Getting rid of Subject is a U.S. operation, at least getting him out of office is. But zero plans were made to provide for his safety. Oh, they think he’s still in the palace. I pitched real hard with Rusk—Subject should be taken to the embassy, I said. It’s the only way; he’d be safe there. Never mind the diplomatic fuss—hell, U.S. embassies have been used before.
And anyway, the White House objective, getting Subject out of the way, would be accomplished.

“Rusk wouldn’t buy in, but he did say we’d provide sanctuary if he actually showed up. So?