33

In the outer room several Americans, Chinese, and Filipinos were quietly drinking, attended by waitresses in red Chinese-style dresses. When Madame Lin had special customers, she usually led them to one of the secluded rooms located through the arched hall and adjacent to the garden. The best of these private rooms had walls of glass. On two facing sides were large aquariums, and palms, banana trees and rosebushes that seemed to press in right through the picture windows making up the other walls.

This special room had a back door opening onto a terrace from which a path led through a tunnel of wisteria vines. At the far end of that curved tunnel stood Madame Lin’s private residence, a white house with a red-tiled roof in the style of the French Riviera. She kept a half dozen rooms with double beds and private baths prepared at all times for use by her guests. The Da Nang Sports Club was frequented by American officers and civilians, and by foreigners visiting to do trade or working in local branches, but as a rule Vietnamese civilians were not allowed in. Once in a while the customers included high-ranking ARVN officers or Vietnamese government officials, but those were exceptional cases.

The waiters were all Vietnamese, hired only after a thorough background check. The hostesses, on the other hand, for the most part were Filipinas, Thais, and Chinese who had migrated from their homes to the battle zone. Occasionally a white woman, a dancer or singer, stranded from one of the touring show companies, would work at the Sports Club for a few weeks or months before heading on to Okinawa, Hong Kong, or wherever. These white women inevitably attracted Vietnamese brass and bureaucrats. Directing this traffic of customers and maintaining the female staff was the vital key to such a business, and Madame Lin managed it as skillfully as a veteran casino dealer shuffling cards.

Oh Hae Jong was in the glass room along with four others, five in all. Present were an American captain named Mike, a finance officer at the US Army Headquarters; Colonel Cao, the Da Nang police superintendent; Frank, chief clerk at the American navy PX; and Beck, an Englishman who was Madame Lin’s husband. Madame Lin herself peeked inside the room every so often and made sure that a steady flow of drinks and food was served to them.

The group was seated around a glass-topped wicker table, playing poker. Beck, who spoke Chinese fluently, was wearing a fancy ivory-colored suit, a pipe in his mouth, and was betting to the bitter end in every game. Even when he lost, he chuckled and exhibited the equanimity of a good-natured fellow. Frank, the PX clerk, was an excellent poker player. Constantly cracking jokes, he had a way of controlling the pace of wagers, cagily raising, passing, or folding to enlarge or diminish the pot in his favor. The player most seriously absorbed in the game was Colonel Cao, but he lost almost every hand to Frank.

Mike was sitting beside Hae Jong, sipping whiskey. He often folded early and seldom stuck in a game to the end. In one round Hae Jong, who was out after the draw, gave this captain a tip that led him to win big with a full house. Mike, along with the other finance officers of the division, was a regular patron and long-standing friend of Madame Lin and Mimi.

“How about some more ice, Mimi?” Mike said, extending his empty glass.

“Aren’t you overdoing it?” she replied distractedly, staring at her hand. “My luck is changing now.”

“Let me have a look. Trying for four of a kind?”

“Hush.”

“Afraid you won’t make it,” said Frank with a loud laugh. “I’m holding a royal flush here. Now, how many do you want?”

“I’m out.” Hae Jong folded and poured two shots of whiskey, one for herself and one for Mike.

“Mike, you cost me a big hand.”

“Well, even if you play until daybreak tomorrow, you’ll never make even a thousand dollars from these peanut stakes, huh?”

“Wow, Mike must have a good thing going,” Frank said, then raised his bet.

“You, you’re winning from Colonel Cao alone,” Mike said. “Colonel, have you decided to let Frank win today?”

“Well, I better make a habit of humoring Frank here. If he ever locks up that cold storage, that’d be the end of the drinking business in Da Nang, no?” said Colonel Cao, winking.

“Mimi, whatever happened with your major?” asked Frank.

“He’s out on an operation in the jungle.”

“So, your husband is out risking his life on the battlefield while you’re in here enjoying a game of poker?”

“That’s right.”

“The reason Madame is playing poker is that it’s hard for her to think of ways to spend the money Major Pham brings home,” Cao said with a cynical air.

“Making money in the jungle?” said Frank. “Is our government now paying a bounty for every VC head?”

“The jungle in the Central Highlands is one enormous cinnamon plantation, and General Liam and Major Pham are harvesting.”

At this remark from Cao, Frank shook his head. “My, my, you must have been excluded from that enterprise.”

“Unfortunately, yes, I was. After all, the jungle is under military jurisdiction, they tell me.”

“Pham Quyen is a patriot,” Hae Jong said. “He’s trying to establish an autonomous enterprise for the phoenix hamlets project by using domestic resources that would otherwise be wasted. Colonel, aren’t you involved in that project, too?”

“Yes, but only in the establishment of the militias.”

“How are the cigarettes and liquor these days? I guess you still have Coca-Cola coming in from Laos?”

At these biting comments from Hae Jong, Colonel Cao was reduced to mumbling and Beck jumped in. “Hey now, the mood is getting a little too grim, enough of that. What do you say we take a break from the cards and have a few drinks instead?”

“Do they make Coca-Cola in Laos?” Mike asked.

“I saw it in the market. Don’t they pack refined heroin into Coco-Cola cans and ship them down across the border? I thought Colonel Cao was in charge of that.”

Cao responded to Hae Jong’s icy query without animosity. “Madame, forgive me for making jokes at Major Pham’s expense. He and I are very close friends, like brothers. The Coca-Cola can problem is something we’re trying to get under control, but as it is, the scale is just too big.”

“If you please, my own feeling is that a dream flower after a bath is much better than alcohol. I was only wondering if I could ask you as a favor to get one of those cans for me.”

“Now, now, that’s enough, already.” Beck refilled everyone’s glass and held up his own. “A toast. To peace.”

Madame Lin came into the room with a waiter in tow. “Ah, it’s already begun. Let me join you.”

The waiter placed a Chinese-style salad garnished with caviar on the table, then left. When he was gone, Lin asked, “Who won?”

“Needless to say, Frank, the old pro, wiped the table clean,” said her husband.

Madame Lin sat down next to Frank, locking her arm around his. “Then you are the hero of the hour. How about a little rendezvous tonight?”

Frank kissed Madame Lin on the cheek to reward her frivolity.

“You and Lin, at last you seem to have recognized that I’ve had my mind set on her for ages. Let’s fly to Australia and live there together.”

“No thanks. But a maiden has just arrived who you can sweep off of her feet and carry away to your sheep ranch.”

“Sounds like an old stripper, a refugee from one of the show troupes, has dropped in. I don’t care much for the white girls.”

“On the contrary, she’s a precious ebony pearl. A dark nineteen-year-old from Ceylon.”

“Shall I have a look at her?” Mike said, and then Cao intervened.

“What if we decide it by a hand of poker?”

“I’m not interested in competing with the colonel over a woman,” Frank said sullenly.

“I’ll buy her,” Mike murmured.

“Mike, you’re drunk,” Hae Jong said.

“Madame Mimi is jealous,” remarked Frank, looking over at the two of them.

Madame Lin pressed the bell and a waiter instantly appeared. “Tell Losa to come in here.”

A few minutes later, a Sri Lankan dancer entered the room. Instead of the red dress that was the house uniform for hostesses, she was wearing a long dress embroidered in yellow and red over a white silk shift. Her black hair, long and lustrous, was hanging down loose over one shoulder. Her skin was dark, but closer to an ash brown color than to black. She was a striking beauty. Frank gazed at her as if oblivious to the world. Madame Lin got up from her place beside Frank and gestured for the girl to sit down. Holding her hands together in the Buddhist way, the dancer bowed ceremoniously and introduced herself.

“Unbelievable!” Mike sighed.

“Unfair, isn’t it?” Colonel Cao murmured.

“The colonel made a good suggestion earlier, I mean, why not play a hand of poker to decide,” Mike stammered.

“This is rude. Gentlemen, let’s be sensible,” Madame Lin said.

“Listen,” Mike went on, “I have an important announcement to make.”

“Captain, civilians have nothing to do with an ordinance from headquarters,” Frank said with a sneer. “Unlike those ancient Greeks, I don’t make war over a woman.”

“If you heard what I have to say, you’d probably get right up and walk out that door.”

“He’s drunk,” Madame Lin said with a frown, and grabbing him under his arms, she pulled him up from his chair. “This won’t do at all. You should go inside to lie down and rest.”

“Wait, don’t do this to me. Don’t throw me out!”

Madame Lin propped him up by the arm and signaled with her eyes to Hae Jong. “Help me, will you? And you, Mike, don’t be such a baby.”

As Madame Lin and Hae Jong led him out, everyone left in the glass room burst into laughter. Even outside on the terrace, Mike kept on mumbling to himself, “The end is coming next week. You’ll all be ruined, I mean it. Even if you beg me on your hands and knees, I won’t do you no favors, I’m telling you.”

“Shut up,” Madame Lin said.

The two women led him through the tunnel and into a luxurious suite in the house. They dumped him down on a sofa, and Hae Jong brought him a bottle of soda from the refrigerator.

“Drink this.”

“Get a good night’s rest here. Mimi will look after you.”

“No, I have to get back before dawn. No overnight pass, so can’t stay here.”

Madame Lin threw Hae Jong a look, and then asked him, “What’s happened?”

“Something big is on the way. We’re changing the military currency,” Mike mumbled.

Madame Lin’s faced showed no surprise. “We’ve got to get his shoes off first,” she said to Hae Jong.

As Hae Jong knelt down and took off his boots, Madame Lin wiped Mike’s forehead with a damp towel. “Did you say you’re changing the currency?” she asked.

As if shocked to hear it from somebody else’s mouth, Mike suddenly lifted his head and whispered, “That’s top secret.”

Mike downed the soda in one gulp and then started coughing.

“When?” Hae Jong asked.

“We’re asking you when,” Madame Lin impatiently repeated.

“The announcement’ll be next week,” Mike replied. “We’re still preparing it.”

“All over the country?”

“Everywhere there’s an American military base.”

Madame Lin looked up and then clicked her tongue. “That will get complicated.”

Around a quarter past nine, a van rolled down Doc Lap Boulevard toward the Grand Hotel. There were two men inside, both wearing grey coveralls of the kind worn by Philco technicians. A small refrigerator crate was in the back. As Doc Lap passes in front of the Grand Hotel there is a left turn onto a quiet driveway, sheltered by trees, that loops behind the hotel, while the busy street veers off the other way. Beyond the curved driveway was the shore, and between it and the beach stood a guardhouse. A patrol boat and a small launch were tethered nearby and the searchlight at the rear of the hotel was brightly lit. On the right side of the hotel, past the spot where Doc Lap turns off to the right, was a green lawn lined with palm trees, leading down toward Da Nang Bay.

A sidewalk ran from this lawn straight across in front of the hotel, and there were sentry posts on either end of this walkway. Cars entered the hotel’s front parking lot after circling from the rear of the hotel and the exit then passed by the other sentry post at the left corner of the front and then back out to the main street. Two Vietnamese police were on guard duty at that post, which had been fortified with sandbags. The van, after slowly circling around, came up to the sentry post at the entrance to the parking lot. As the policeman stepped forward, the van dimmed its lights and waited with the interior lamps switched on.

“What’s this?”

“Sir, we’re making a delivery for the Philco manager on the third floor.”

The policeman looked inside the van. “Is that a refrigerator?

“I guess it is.”

As if he didn’t want to be bothered, the policeman waved them on with his flashlight. The car passed the checkpoint and drove straight by the front door of the hotel and into the parking lot. A guard on duty in the parking lot came over to the van.

“What is this? Are you Vietnamese?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t park here.”

“We’re not parking. This is a Philco vehicle. We have to make a delivery.”

“A refrigerator?”

“That’s right.”

The guard took a peek inside, and then said in an annoyed voice, “Leave the car here and take it on over.”

The two men lifted the refrigerator crate and walked around toward the corner leading to the beach guardhouse. The searchlight shone brightly. A barricade had been erected with an iron grating. The freight entrance was at the rear corner of the parking lot, and an elevator had been set up on the outside of the hotel. A hotel clerk waved to them.

“Leave it over there.” Then he picked up the telephone and asked, “What’s the room number?”

“It’s for a Philco manager on the third floor.”

“You don’t know the room number?”

The two men looked at each other and one said, scratching his head, “Well, how are we supposed to know? You know, the gentleman just told us to bring it here, so here we are. He’s now at the company office. He’s an American, you want to check with him on the phone?”

“Ah, don’t bother. Just leave it there.”

The two men set the crate down against the wall where other boxes were heaped up. Then they walked slowly back to the parking lot and got into the van. Upon leaving they followed a different route than that by which they had come, and turned right from the looping drive and then into an alley. They made a U-turn and then halted back near the mouth of the walled alley next to a private house. They switched off the headlights but left the engine running. It was late and the neighborhood was still.

“Time allowed?”

“Five minutes.”

The cell leader, seated next to the driver, reached behind the back seat and pulled out a submachine gun. Then he got into the back seat and opened the window on the left side. He put a clip in and readied the gun to fire. He picked up a hand grenade and handed it to the driver.

“Take this. Roll it on the street later.”

“And you?”

“I’ve got three.”

They closed all the windows. All of a sudden there was an explosion, so loud and heavy that the ground kept shaking for seconds after. There was a flash of light, and shards of glass could be seen flying through the air like tracers.

“Let’s go!”

The van sped out and into the hotel driveway. A pillar of flames was rising from the building and they could see off-duty troops pouring out of the hotel’s front entrance. The van rushed around toward the front hotel, firing the submachine gun. The sentries were hit and a hand grenade tossed into the parking lot blew up in a dense cluster of vehicles. Over on the green, tree-lined lawn, three guerrillas were on the ground, shooting toward the entrance. As it drove away, the van let loose more grenades and blew up the sentry box near the exit. Then, its brakes screeched as it stopped to pick up the three team members who had been providing covering fire from the grassy promenade. They all got safely inside and the van sped away down Doc Lap Boulevard then turned over through a back alley to Puohung Street and a little way on stopped behind a row of parked cars. All five of them got out of the car and disappeared into the darkness.

At the same time, ten o’clock sharp, other units of the 434th Special Action Group also executed their missions. The first unit attacked oil storage facilities near China Beach, the second unit hit the barracks at a detachment of the ARVN First Division, and the third unit bombed the main gate at MAC headquarters.

The first unit had assembled in the slums of Somdomeh and from there penetrated into the vicinity of the navy hospital overlooking the oil terminal at China Beach. They each carried a revolver or a carbine and the team was equipped with a 107mm Chinese-made short-barreled rocket launcher. Each carried over his shoulder a canvas bag containing two rocket projectiles, making a total of ten. At the appointed time, they launched five rockets from a range of about three thousand feet, three of which hit the target. Immediately afterwards, they launched three of the remaining rockets toward the heliport on the other side of the navy hospital, then withdrew as quickly as they could. If they were not gone within ten minutes the launching point would be traced by US radar, and gunships would be sent after them while ground forces sought to encircle their position to foreclose escape. As it exploded, one of the oil reservoir tanks shot lumps of flame in all directions, causing the fire to spread to other tanks nearby.

The third unit set off a bomb at the main gate of the MAC headquarters. Instead of using blasting caps, they detonated the bomb using an electrical switch wired from the site to a hiding place in the campside slums nearby. The guard station at the gate was blown up and the wall and the barricades left were broken into rubble.

Charged with the mission of hitting the barracks of an ARVN battalion, the second unit mobilized two vehicles and made a frontal assault on the sentry box at the main gate of the barracks, mowing down the guards with AK-47s. Then they torched the main barracks, tossing hand grenades in and spattering the building with automatic rifle fire, while the backup force lobbed smoke shells into other parts of the compound to sow confusion. The soldiers inside tried to mount a counterattack, but they were in disarray after being awakened and the guerrillas inflicted more casualties and then slipped away under cover of the smoke.

The separate operations by the four units were all executed concurrently and took less than ten minutes from beginning to end. In one instance, the whole attack was over in less than five minutes.

The charge exploded at the Grand Hotel had been an anti-tank mine. The streets shook when it went off, and many houses along Doc Lap Boulevard had all of their windows shattered by the shock. At the sound of the blast, Colonel Cao, who had a woman in his arms as he sat with Frank in the glass room at the Sports Club, had a dazed look. Losa from Sri Lanka, who had been necking with Frank, let out a piercing shriek. Water began to pour down from the cracked glass walls, and suddenly the water burst out of the aquariums and there were live fish squirming around on the carpet amidst the broken glass. Cao and Frank, being men familiar with the battlefield, kicked open the door and ran outside. The customers who had been drinking in the outer room were all cowering down on the floor with the waiters. Cao dashed to the door. His driver and bodyguard rushed up, breathless.

“What’s going on?”

“We have no idea, sir.”

“Which direction was it?”

“From the north, looks like.”

“It seemed very close.”

Cao and his men ran outside to the police car. As they approached it, suddenly another car parked nearby turned on its headlights. Frowning, Cao instinctively held one hand in front of his forehead. The car lurched straight toward him, a submachine gun firing from within. Hit more than a dozen times, Cao tumbled to the ground. His driver and bodyguard pulled out their guns but also fell before they could fire a single shot. The car paused in front of the Sports Club long enough for the occupants to throw two hand grenades inside and to rake the building with gunfire, then it roared away with tires squealing.

Hae Jong sprang up in bed. Mike, who had been sleeping like a log beside her, awoke at the same time and in an instant had rolled onto the floor and crawled under the bed. The sight of his behind disappearing struck her as funny, somehow, but quickly she threw off the sheet and was on her feet. With nothing on but a robe she rushed downstairs, running into Lin, also dressed in a gown. After the first enormous explosion, there had been a lull, followed by a series of shots from somewhere very near.

Lin embraced Mimi and said, “We must escape quickly. It’s the Viet Cong. Oh, Beck, where are you?”

Beck soon appeared hopping down the stairs in pajamas. They huddled together and crossed the garden. There was an air raid shelter in the backyard that had not been used for a long time. On the way, Hae Jong pulled away and started to go back.

“Mimi, where are you going?” Lin asked.

“Mike’s in the room.”

“Don’t call him. An American soldier is dangerous.”

Still, she turned back. She could not leave Mike. Not because she had slept with that ordinary-looking American several times. In such danger, she would not have gone back for Pham Quyen if it had been him lying under that bed. But Mike was a finance officer at headquarters. If he died, she would lose the key to US dollars. Especially now, when a single day seemed to her like a dozen years. Again there was the noise of a grenade exploding. She rushed into the room.

“Mike! Mike!”

He crawled back out from beneath the bed.

“The Viet Cong are here. Quickly, get out!”

Hae Jong covered his naked body with a sheet and pulled him along by the hand. He was trembling like a leaf.

Madame Lin was waving from the entrance to the air raid shelter. “This way, Mimi.”

The four of them lay down in a clump on the damp cement floor spotted with puddles. Another fusillade could be heard outside. Then all the lights went out. When it quieted down, Lin was weeping softly.

They heard a loud siren, followed by the sound of a car pulling to a stop. They heard voices shouting back and forth in Vietnamese. Beck craned his head out of the entrance of the shelter and then said, “Sounds like government forces . . .”

“We don’t know yet. If it’s not Americans, then we can’t be sure yet of our safety,” said Madame Lin, tugging at her husband’s pajama leg.

“She’s right,” Hae Jong agreed. “You can never tell who’s who among the government forces. Don’t go out until you hear English.”

Mike was shivering inside of his sheet. As an administrative officer from the American Northeast, he was the sort of soldier who, after holding a rifle a few times in basic training, had seldom been away from his air-conditioned office at headquarters, where cold drinks were always available for the asking. He had heard gunfire a few times, but never before had he experienced a firefight in close proximity like this. Hae Jong kept patting him on the shoulder.

“I’m an American soldier; the guerrillas will kidnap me,” Mike kept moaning. “They’ll drag us all away.”

Hae Jong hugged him. “It’s all over now, don’t worry.”

They heard the clomping of heavy boots, then warning shots, loud enough to deafen you, came from close by. Then another burst of automatic weapons fire tore through the darkened club. After the sound of glass breaking, several dark figures of men appeared on the terrace.

Beck yelled out, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

They heard someone say something in Vietnamese, and this time Hae Jong shouted back, “Nguoi mi, toi la nguoi Dai Han.”

Flashlights shone down into the shelter. At the order “Lai, lai” Beck went out, his hands raised. Hae Jong helped Mike, while Madame Lin, still skeptical about the situation, followed last with her back stooped low. The soldiers were an airborne squad belonging to the provincial government security detachment.

A lieutenant came up and asked Beck, “Isn’t there anyone else inside?”

Beck recognized the face of this lieutenant; he was one of Colonel Cao’s men. “No, only us,” he said. “But there were others inside the club. The colonel, what happened to Colonel Cao? Frank was also there. What about the other customers?”

The lieutenant shook his head. “The colonel was the enemy’s target. They did him in on the street.” From inside the club the Vietnamese staff and the hostesses began to emerge and the lights came on again. When she saw the bullet-ridden bar and the wretched condition of the interior and furniture, nearly demolished by the two grenades, Madame Lin broke down and cried. The wounded were still strewn all about. In the hall could be seen the blood-soaked corpses of three men and two women. The body lying under the arch at the entry to the hall turned out to be Frank’s. Beck spoke to the terrified employees and hostesses.

“Now, the men will clean up the broken glass and the rest of the damage, and you women should go back inside to the house and get some rest.

He gently nudged his wife on the back. “I can deal with the soldiers here, so you go ahead.”

Madame Lin was still covering her mouth to stifle another outburst of weeping, and Hae Jong escorted her back to the residence. Mike, who had been squatting on the terrace with a blanket, followed the two women into the house.

“Go back to the room,” Hae Jong said to Mike, “I’ll look after the Madame.”

The two women went into Lin’s bedroom suite. After helping her to lie down on the bed, Hae Jong took a bottle of whiskey out of the liquor cabinet.

“Here, have a drink. Then sleep a little, and before you know it everything will be in order again.”

Lin finished the glass in a single gulp and then heaved a great sigh. “Another, please. Nobody knows how hard it was for me to make this club, and now it’s all gone. Now you see why I was so insistent about keeping Vietnamese out of this place.”

“Poor Frank! Did you see his body?”

“Horrible, I couldn’t bear to look. Mike, where’s Mike? He was with us in the shelter.”

Hae Jong handed her another scotch and soda. “He’s back in the same room as before.”

Drinking more slowly, Madame Lin gradually recovered her wits.

“Wait, Mike said something very important.”

“Yes, and believe me, I haven’t forgotten, either.”

“That the military currency will be changed . . . isn’t that awfully important?”

“It is,” said Hae Jong. “You and I just grabbed a golden opportunity. We saved Mike’s life.”

“Mimi, what time is it now?” Lin asked, gazing about.

“A little after eleven.”

Lin sat up in bed. “It’s still early then, eh? We’ve got a lot to talk over with the captain.”

Hae Jong got up. “I’ll call him.”

“Hold on a minute. No rush. First, we need to figure out what sorts of things will happen when the old currency is swapped for new. Right away many people will go into a frenzy to exchange before the old currency is no good. You’ll be able to get a commission for changing it, and the commission will grow as time runs out. By the last day, you’ll be able to buy the old currency dirt cheap with piasters, like it was wastepaper.”

As the effect of the whiskey spread over her face, Lin was gradually being transformed back into the old, sly owner of the Sports Club.

“The best time will be right at the very end, after the deadline,” Hae Jong said. “Because we’ll be in no hurry. I mean, as long as we can count on Mike’s help. The lousy commissions are for the moneychanger or the little guys—as for us, we’ll just collect worthless military currency and cash it in for new money.”

“But Major Pham must have large amounts of military currency, don’t you think?” Lin asked. “We have quite a bit, too.”

“We’ve been changing it into greenbacks each month. Of course, we were planning to change them all into checks for remittance later, but . . . Anyway, what military currency we have, we can always get Mike to handle that. The big question is, how much time can Mike give us after the deadline has passed?”

By this time Lin was wide-awake and sitting straight up in the bed. “We’ll propose that we collect the military currency and split the profit with him.”

“I’ll go bring him back here.”

When she came into the room, she found Mike sitting there with only his army pants on, drinking a Coke. He seemed to have recovered his composure a little. He must have had a shower, for he was wiping off his forehead with a towel draped around his neck. Hae Jong sat across from him and took out a Marlboro cigarette. Mike lit it with his lighter.

“Thanks, Mimi. They’re all dead, I mean, Frank and the colonel.”

Hae Jong reached out with her hand and ruffled Mike’s brown hair. “Don’t be a baby. You’re a soldier and this is a battlefield.”

“I have no overnight pass and I’m getting worried about getting back. It’s time . . .”

Mike was looking at his bare wrist and then started searching around the bed for his watch.

“It’s not even twelve yet,” said Hae Jong. “You said you needed to be back at dawn. Before daybreak, Beck will take you back in his car. By the way, what you said earlier, is that true?”

“What did I say?”

Hae Jong took a deep puff on the cigarette and, exhaling smoke in Mike’s face, said in a cynical tone, “So, it’s supposed to be top secret, huh? You said they’ll change the military currency.”

Mike jumped up. “Did I say that? When? Who heard me? I’m in deep shit now.”

“You said it in this room to Madame Lin and me, nobody else. You don’t need to be so surprised. Mike, you know you almost stayed behind in that room with Frank and Colonel Cao. We were the ones who forced you out. Maybe we should have left you there with them and let you die. That way the secret would’ve been kept, all right.”

Mike raised his arms, as if in surrender. “It’s an order from headquarters in Saigon. From next Monday, the exchange period is one week.”

“Then after noon next Saturday, even the American soldiers won’t be able to use the old military currency at the PXs, right?” Hae Jong thought back to those little commotions in the campside villages. Suddenly, all the American soldiers vanish from the bars, the brothels, and the souvenir shops. A desolate night descends quietly on the campside village, which starts to seem like one of those Gold Rush boomtowns occupied only by ghosts after the mine is shut down. The colorful signs, the gaudy red lights, the whores with their hair dyed yellow and their nails painted red, black, or silver—this rainbow spectrum loses all of its color the moment the link to America is cut off. The specious carnival suddenly reveals its true self. Chocolate drops and candy bars in fancy wrappers, smooth soaps smelling of fragrant dreams, cigarettes adorned with silvery scripts and graceful logos, all sizes and shapes of liquor bottles; these PX goods all lose their magical powers and are degraded into isolated things as soon as the people who consume them have disappeared.

Mornings in the campside villages are always desolate, like the stage in a theater where daylight has intruded. When a rumor circulates that the GIs will change their money, the bar owners, the dry cleaners, the pimps and the whores, even the shoeshine boys all go crazy. All they talk about is dollars, and they vent their indignation at the betrayal by the GIs. When the last day comes, they resolutely burn the most omnipotent little picture-bearing papers on earth. Touched by flames, those oily little sheets turn dark and shrivel before disappearing. The whores do not cry as they peer at the flames. So-and-so lost this much, so-and-so got an advance warning and bought such-and-such goods, so-and-so wallpapered her room with worthless notes, and so on and so forth, all sorts of stories make the circuit through the grapevine until the American soldiers reappear on the scene.

When they come back, all the inhabitants of the campside village soon forget about the money consumed by the flames. They feel relieved that living things have regained their livelihoods with the mediation of the American military. The posts of the US Army are firmly linked to such relief, such anesthesia. Think of a shoeshine boy who instantly can be reconciled to his wretched fate because a Salem cigarette is glowing with a bluish light at the tip of his filthy fingers. This carnival can last only as long as the Americans stay. All the goods and all the ornaments with which the festival is festooned manage incessantly to reproduce, making a solid network among themselves lest anything leak out.

Dollars tossed onto that field of blood, the realm of Caesar, make a blood-red mold from which blossoms emerge—dollars are the money-medium of the world, an instrument of control. The dollar is the leading edge in the imperialist order and the American ID is the organizer. Blood-red flowers are blossoming as part of the aid that spreads military and political power ever more widely over the entire world, aid providing rich nutrition for American capital acting through its network of multinational enterprises, aid to replenish the supply of dollars used as an important medium of international settlements, a medium of savings and of trust, and the solvent that assures prosperity for the international banks.

Hae Jong thought of her first night with Jerry, the American master sergeant back home. The filthy pink curtains, the cheap wallpaper, the 60-watt bulb, the fly shit, the neon light blinking all night through the dirt-smudged window, the odor of Jerry’s chest like that of a rain-soaked dog—she had laid her cheek on that pillow smeared with hair oil facing the wall and tears had streamed down over her face. Jerry stuck his dollars on Hae Jong’s pillow the same way he put paper in his typewriter at the office. The sound of his boots as he trudged away, the long honk of the car, the pop song by Mun Ju-Ran, the aroma of a salty croaker roasted on the fire, the Korean men in pajamas with toothbrushes in their mouths—through the narrow window up by the ceiling, Hae Jong had gazed over the fence of the American army base. The morning sunlight shone through the chain-link fence, casting shadows in ever-repeating shapes. Dollars—greenbacks with an image of ivy vines in a blue rainbow pattern, drawn as though powerfully and insidiously alive—that crisp, lofty paper money used to stare up imposingly at Hae Jong’s naked figure from that filthy satin pillow.

“Why are they changing it?”

“What do you mean why?” the captain echoed her question.

“It’ll only bring great confusion. And that won’t be good for the American army, either.”

“The problem is embezzlement. We’ve been losing five hundred million dollars annually, and that’s only the official figure. Just recently in Saigon we lost an entire container holding several tons of military currency with a face value in the tens of millions of dollars. The truth is, civilian businessmen and US soldiers are dumping the currency and then claiming theft to make arbitrary adjustments in freight receipts and invoices and to evade tax. We have intelligence suggesting that the amount of military currency circulating in the black market is close to a billion dollars. Now the war is reaching a new phase.”

“Then, the war will be ending?”

“I guess . . . when negotiations are concluded we may pull out of here.”

“That means packing up and leaving!”

“I can understand you, Mimi,” Mike said. “But you’d better not think about settling down in Vietnam. It’s unfortunate for your major, though.”

“I can always go to a third country.”

“With the major? Do you love him?”

“Shut up.”

Hae Jong stubbed out her cigarette and got up.

“Madame Lin said she’s got something for the three of us to discuss.”

“Us?”

“That’s right. You, me, and Madame Lin.”

Lin already had taken off her gown and changed into silk pants and a T-shirt. She had prepared a table for drinking.

“Care for some cognac?”

“Not for me. I barely managed to sober up.” Mike hesitantly took a seat.

“The Viet Cong won’t be back,” said Lin. “Without a drink, you’ll be awake all night.”

“What the hell.”

The three clinked their glasses together.

“To our business,” said Madame Lin.

“What business?”

“Don’t be coy,” said Hae Jong. “You’re a finance officer, right? We’ll gather up the old military currency and you can exchange it for us.”

“There’s no rush,” added Madame Lin. “There’s still plenty of time before daybreak.”