My name is Paul Quinn. I’m Australian.
Many years ago, when I was a young man and considered by some capable of almost anything (except treason), I was recruited into a secretive government organization in Canberra that used diplomatic cover. My first posting was Saigon, near the end of the Vietnam War. It didn’t last long. The war ended sooner than anyone expected, and we all had to leave in a hurry. But during that time two things happened which were to change my life later on, and the lives of several other people.
First, soon after my arrival, I met a girl at a party. A Vietnamese girl, or young woman. The party was at the house of my predecessor, another young man, named David Harper. He worked in the political section of the embassy, where among other things he was in charge of press affairs – always a useful cover for an intelligence officer – while I did some language training in-country before taking over from him at the end of his tour. In those days the organization was still small and junior officers were often sent out on their own.
The girl was very attractive, with that mix of willowy grace, strength and intelligence which I found so captivating in Vietnamese women, and I would have liked to know her better. But she was there with her fiancé, a gangling young man from the Faculty of Sciences, and I didn’t insist. There were lots of attractive girls in Saigon. I soon had other things to worry about.
Two weeks later David was killed. He had gone down to Can Thơ, a large town on the Mekong, to meet a new contact with links to the Viet Cong leadership, and on the way back his car was shot up by – it was presumed – a Viet Cong sniper. Naturally I was pulled off my course at once to replace him. My first duty after informing headquarters was to go down to the delta to bring his body back to Saigon. Put some iron in your soul, my ambassador said, and teach you not to do anything so stupid.
The embassy was in shock. Diplomats’ lives were not without risk, but they rarely ended so brutally. Nobody could work out why Harper was on that road after dark. There was no need for him to rush back to Saigon that night, and he’d been around long enough not to take risks like that.
David had died in late February. In mid-March the North Vietnamese launched their last offensive of the war, in the Central Highlands. Six weeks later, after a series of lightning successes on their part and dismal failures by the South Vietnamese, they were on the outskirts of Saigon, massing for the final assault. The embassy withdrew in stages, the last wave leaving on the twenty-fifth of April, Anzac Day, 1975, five days before the final surrender.
Fifteen years of war had killed 58,000 Americans, 500 Australians, and probably millions of Vietnamese of both sides – and now it was over. An uneasy peace fell on the south, as the communists imposed their harsh and unforgiving rule. The era of the boat people was about to begin.
By then I’d forgotten all about that girl, and our brief meeting.
She remembered.
Twenty years later, in early 1995, many things had changed in my life. I had left government service to try my luck in business, and I lived in Sydney, where I ran a small personnel agency. I was forty-five, divorced, and I lived alone.
One afternoon in the late Australian summer of that year a Mrs Hao Tran phoned me at work. I’d never heard of her, but she was the girl I had met long ago at that party of David’s in Saigon. Tran was her married name. She lived in England now, she said, and she was in Australia on a visit. She asked if she could come to see me, as she needed my advice about a problem she had.
When I asked what kind of problem, she said it was personal, complicated, and had something to do with David. She was quick to add that they’d never been close, and yet the problem related to him. When I pressed she pleaded.
‘Please, Mr Quinn. Apart from you I don’t know anyone in Australia who might be able to help me. You were his friend–’
She told me she was staying in Marrickville, about forty minutes by train from our office in North Sydney, and I agreed to see her that afternoon, as soon as she could make it. It was a Friday, just after four, with work about finished for the day. We were on the sixth floor of an old office block, not far from the station.
‘Thank you very much, Mr Quinn. You don’t know how much I appreciate this.’
She sounded as if she meant it. I wondered what I was letting myself in for.