Gavin stared at Nhu across the candlelit table on the Continental’s terrace. ‘You mean your brother is in the South again?’ he asked, careful to keep his voice low despite his incredulity. ‘Here? In Saigon?’
Her eyes went quickly to the other tables around them. No one was paying them any attention. The young American who had been looking curiously in their direction when they had first arrived, was now deep in conversation with his two Vietnamese companions. She said very quietly, ‘Not in Saigon. But nearby.’
Gavin’s mind raced furiously. According to Gabrielle, her mother’s brother was a full-fledged North Vietnamese Army colonel. If he could meet him, talk to him, then he would learn more about the war in five minutes than he would in a year of attending official American press conferences and ambiguously worded briefings.
‘I want to meet him,’ he said, laying down his fork and sipping a glass of water. ‘Can you arrange it, Nhu?’
She didn’t answer him for several seconds, and when she did, her voice was unsteady, betraying the agitation that lay beneath her veneer of unruffled composure. ‘Yes,’ she said, so quietly he could barely hear her. ‘That is why I am here.’
Her reply was so unexpected that his hand shook and water spilled as he set his glass back down on the table. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, wondering if he had misheard her. ‘I don’t understand …’
Her eyes were troubled. ‘Neither do I, but I have shown Dinh the letters Vanh sent to me in which she says you be trusted. And he wants to talk to you.’
Sheer elation sang down Gavin’s spine. He had hoped that his family-by-marriage in Saigon would prove helpful to him as a reporter, but he had never envisaged a coup such as this. Gabrielle had said that when Dinh had come south in 1963, it had been on the express orders of General Giap. And Giap was Ho Chi Minh’s right-hand man, the architect of the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. He wondered what on earth Vanh had put in her letters that such a man would trust him, sight unseen.
He said hesitantly, knowing he would never forgive himself if his confession ruined his chances of a meeting, yet knowing he would never be able to live with himself if Gabrielle’s uncle were to risk capture and death under the mistaken impression that he was meeting a fellow Communist, ‘I sympathize with the North, Nhu. I think the American bombing campaign against northern towns and the killing of large numbers of innocent civilians is morally indefensible. But I am not a Communist.’
‘Neither am I,’ she said, a slight smile touching her mouth, ‘I am a nationalist, and I support Ho. Although he is a Communist, I believe that he is also, first and foremost, a nationalist and a patriot.’
A waiter approached and she fell silent. When he had refilled her glass and moved away a safe distance, she continued quietly. ‘And as a patriot I believe he will always place Vietnam’s interest above that of personal ideology.’
It was a popular view. From everything he had read about Nguyen That Thanh, born seventy-six years ago in the village of Kim Lie, some 300 kilometres south of Hanoi, and known to the world by the alias Ho Chi Minh, Gavin thought that it was probably also correct.
‘Are there any arrangements for me to meet your brother, Nhu?’
‘I haven’t yet been told. I had to meet you first and—’ she blushed slightly, looking much younger than her thirty-two years – ‘and make my own judgement about you.’
He grinned, knowing that trust had sprung up between them immediately and that her judgement would be favourable.
The waiter approached again, removing plates and asking if they were ready for coffee. Gavin said that they were, and when the waiter was once again out of earshot he said curiously, ‘I must confess I was surprised when you suggested we meet here, Nhu. Isn’t it a very conspicuous rendezvous? Aren’t we liable to attract attention?’
Her smile deepened. ‘Have you never read that great story “The Purloined Letter” by Edgar Allan Poe?’
He shook his head, bemused at the unexpected range of her literary knowledge. Reading his thoughts, she said, unoffended, ‘You forget that I was educated at a French school, Gavin. American literature was part of our syllabus in my last year.’
‘It was part of mine as well,’ he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘But somehow or other we seem to have overlooked Mr Poe. Tell me about his purloined letter. What does it have to do with us meeting here, at the Continental?’
The waiter came and served coffee. The terrace where they were sitting overlooked the plaza surrounding the old opera house, and as the hour grew later, the always-chaotic traffic intensified. Young Vietnamese pimps on-souped-up scooters and Honda 50s zipped between Citroëns and Renaults as they transported their charges from rendezvous to rendezvous. The girls sat behind them, some in miniskirts so short it was doubtful if they were wearing anything below the waist at all, some in gossamer-light ao dais, their split skirts fluttering like streamers in their wake, and all with exotically painted faces.
She said, ‘The letter was searched for in vain. Under carpets, beneath mattresses. But because it was known to have been hidden, no one thought of looking in the most obvious place.’
‘Which was?’ he asked, wishing that Gabrielle were with him to enjoy the company of her delightful aunt.
Her eyes sparkled mischievously, reminding him so much of Gabrielle that a pang of longing stabbed through him, so sharp he had to physically prevent himself from crying out. ‘In the card rack,’ she said, gurgling with laughter. ‘And the Continental is our card rack. Meeting openly like this, in front of all Saigon, will arouse far less suspicion than meeting furtively.’
They had drunk their coffee and then he had walked her down the steps leading to the plaza and had flagged down a battered blue and yellow taxicab for her.
‘I will contact you,’ she had promised, and then her eyes had become dark and urgent. ‘But please remember, Gavin. Tell no one of who it is you are going to meet.’
He needed no reminding. Enormous trust was being placed in him and he had no intention of betraying it. ‘I won’t,’ he said gravely. ‘Good night, Nhu.’
She stepped into the taxi, and as it began to draw away she leaned toward the open window, once again smiling, calling out teasingly, ‘I did not think an Australian nephew by marriage would be at all a nice thing to have, but I was wrong! Welcome to our family, Gavin!’
He waved, grinning with pleasure, and then turned and walked slowly back into the hotel. Despite the success of his trip to Hue, he was still very much a new boy at the press bureau and he had no idea if Paul Dulles would be cooperative about his disappearing on a story he was unable to even talk about.
He had a nightcap in the bar and decided that he would say nothing to Paul for the moment. There would be time enough to worry about Paul’s cooperation when Nhu made contact, and that might not be for days, or even weeks. He slid from the bar stool and made his way to bed, wondering what Gabrielle was doing at that very moment, whether she was thinking of him – if she was missing him as painfully as he was missing her.
The next afternoon Paul sent him with Jimmy Giddings to JUSPAO, the Joint United States Public Affairs Office.
‘It pains me to admit it,’ Jimmy said, munching on a hamburger that was serving as a late lunch, ‘but these biased announcements issued by the American command are almost the only source of our news. Investigative trips like yours to Hue are rarer than you might think.’
They turned into the JUSPAO building, passing an armed marine at the door. Above the entrance was a framed portrait of a smiling President Johnson. ‘That guy sure has a lot to answer for,’ Jimmy said as they began to walk through a maze of windowless corridors. ‘He got America into this damned mess, but Christ knows how he’s going to get her out of it.’
Corridor led into corridor, and just as Gavin was beginning to wonder if they were ever going to end, they came to a small theatre crowded with newsmen.
‘Here we go,’ Jimmy said, finding a space against the rear wall and settling himself comfortably against it. ‘The cheapest, most entertaining show in town.’
There was a chuckle of agreeing laughter from the reporters standing nearest to them, and then the noise level in the room died down a little as an American colonel strode across the stage to a lectern. Behind him was a large-scale map of Vietnam, liberally highlighted in blue and pink, and on a board by his side were pinned half a dozen statistical charts.
‘The blue bits on the map are areas controlled by US and allied forces, the pink bits are the areas controlled by the Cong,’ Jimmy whispered as the colonel wished them all good afternoon and a soldier in front of the stage activated a large reel-to-reel tape recorder.
‘What are the white bits?’ Gavin whispered back.
Jimmy began to chew on a piece of gum. ‘The white bits are so-called “movement areas”, all moving towards being blue bits if you believe what the man up there is going to tell you. Personally, I don’t.’
Gavin listened to a recap of the Buddhist disturbances in Hue, the descriptions of the horror that he had himself witnessed sanitized by specialist lingo. The reports of engagements between American troops and Viet Cong were treated in the same disorienting manner. Accidental civilian deaths were ‘friendly casualties’, Americans killed in action were referred to only by the letters KIA, and figures that looked horrendous to Gavin were described as being ‘light’. There was a sheet on which was estimated the weekly kill ratio, the number of Viet Cong killed per American, the conclusion seeming to be that no matter the number of American dead, if numerically there were more Viet Cong dead, then the war was being won.
‘How do they know that the figures for Viet Cong dead are correct?’ he whispered to Jimmy. ‘I thought the VC tried to recover their dead whenever possible?’
Jimmy looked across at him pityingly. ‘They do,’ he said, transferring his chewing gum from the left side of his mouth to the right. ‘But whenever a platoon has engaged the enemy, the officer in command is asked how many Cong they hit. He doesn’t have to have the bodies to back up his figures. He just has to think of a number and double it.’
‘You mean the Viet Cong dead figures are estimates, and only the American figures are for real?’
‘If you get any sharper, you’ll cut yourself,’ Jimmy said with good-natured sarcasm.
‘–American aircraft bombed targets close to Hanoi and Haiphong yesterday,’ the colonel continued, ‘destroying an estimated fifty percent of the North’s fuel supply—’
‘If we can’t rely on what we’re being told, why do we come?’ Gavin demanded, sotto voce.
‘Because it’s easy,’ Jimmy said, his tone indicating that it was a fact even a three-year-old would have grasped. ‘And because only the military know what’s been happening all around the country, each and every day. They may tell us only what they want us to know, but at least we get some sort of a coherent picture. You could spend weeks hitching helicopters with the troops, but you won’t necessarily get any clearer a view of what the hell is happening.’
Gavin’s mouth set in a tight, firm line. Jimmy, middle-aged and war weary, had settled for relying on the information being given out by the American military, but it didn’t mean that he had to. The sooner he could hop aboard a helicopter with the troops, the better he would like it.
Two days later he got his chance. ‘How would you like to cover the making of a free fire zone?’ Paul asked as he strolled into the office. ‘As the answer is obviously yes, get yourself down to the air base. There’s a party of marines on their way to a place called Cam Lai. They’re expecting you.’
It was his first time in an army helicopter. A big, black marine grinned at Him and handed him a helmet and a flak jacket. ‘Don’t worry, man, this ain’t no heavy situation, just a safe little hop, a pleasant afternoon out in the boonies.’
Gavin looked around at the other marines seated on the floor of the wide-bellied Chinook. From the bored expressions on their faces, he figured he’d been told the truth.
The village they were flown into was made up of thatched-roof huts and paddyfields.
‘Come on men!’ the officer shouted as the marines began to bundle out of the helicopter into the stifling mid-morning heat. ‘Let’s git it on and over with!’
The first thing that Gavin heard above the roar of the rotor blades was the sound of desperate sobbing. Women were milling bewilderedly in the mud-baked streets, babies on their hips as they struggled with boxes and baskets of pitiful possessions.
The leading marine was already shouting to them to make their way toward the waiting Chinook, jerking his rifle to emphasize his words.
‘How long have these people had to prepare to leave their homes?’ Gavin shouted to the officer over the sound of the still-pulsating rotors.
‘They were leafleted at nine this mornin’,’ the marine said, taking out a cigarette and lighting it as his men began to search the huts, ejecting wailing toddlers and terrified old people at rifle point.
‘Christ!’ Gavin felt as if he were in a lunatic asylum. ‘It’s only eleven now! How the hell do you expect them to be ready to abandon homes they’ve lived in for generations in just two hours?’
‘Aw, they ain’t got much stuff,’ the officer said complacently.
Gavin wondered what would happen to his press accreditation if he socked an officer on the jaw on his first trip out in the field. One of the women, nearly dwarfed by a bundle of household belongings, tottered and fell as she was herded towards them. None of the marines made any move to help her to her feet.
‘These are our allies, for Christ’s sake!’ Gavin yelled at the disinterested marines as he ran forward, taking hold of the woman’s arm and helping her ease herself up from the dirt. ‘We’re supposed to be winning their hearts and minds, not terrifying the life out of them!’
The officer strolled threateningly towards him. ‘You’re goin’ to make yourself very unpopular playin’ the boy scout,’ he said as the woman hurriedly picked up her bundle, clutching it close to her chest. ‘Seems to me you should be askin’ yourself why there’s no able-bodied men in this here village. And the answer is, because they’re probably all VC. If they are, then it’ll be a pleasure to burn their village to the ground, and if they ain’t, then I reckon they should be pretty glad to be goin’ to a camp where they’ll be protected ’gainst the VC.’
There was nothing Gavin could do. He stood impotently, white-lipped with rage, as the crying, protesting villagers were herded aboard the Chinook. God alone knew where they were being taken. The officer had said a camp. Wherever it was, it wasn’t home and it never would be. Home was the village where their fathers had been born, and their father’s father, and their father’s father’s father.
‘We’ve got a problem, sir!’ one of the marines yelled out, running up to them. ‘There’s an old man no one can move! Says his family shrine is here and he has to stay and tend it!’
‘Assholes,’ the officer said succinctly. ‘Tell him this is goin’ to be a free fire zone, and after today, anythin’ movin’ here will be regarded as VC and shot. Got that?’
‘Yes sir,’ the marine said unhappily. ‘I’ve already told him that, sir, and he says he won’t come. He says it’s his duty to stay with the graves of his people. That if we want to move him, we’ll have to kill him first.’
For one terrible moment Gavin thought the officer was going to give a laconic order for the old man to be shot. Instead, he said irritably. ‘Okay. Leave him. We’re behind schedule. Zippo the huts and let’s be off.’
As the last of the villagers crowded aboard the Chinook, some with baskets of squawking hens, a couple of them with pigs in their arms, none of them knowing where they were going or what was to become of them, the marines set fire to the straw-thatched huts.
The smoke billowed thickly up into the hot, humid air. Aboard the Chinook the sobbing gave way to despairing whimpers and then to passive, helpless silence. Gavin climbed aboard and joined them, sick at heart. The old man had run off limping towards the paddy fields and, presumably, his family burial ground. Gavin knew that he wouldn’t survive there for long. In a free fire zone nothing, man or beast, survived for very long.
‘So you didn’t like what you saw?’ Paul said to him later at the bureau office.
‘I didn’t understand what I saw!’ Gavin exploded savagely. ‘Those people are our allies! America is supposedly in Vietnam to help and protect them! Can you imagine American or British generals in occupied France or Italy during the Second World War, ordering the herding of whole communities away from their homes to live in what can be described only as concentration camp conditions so that free fire zones could be created? The answer is that you can’t, and if you want to know what the difference is, then I’ll tell you! The difference, conscious or unconscious, is racial. If those Vietnamese I saw being ordered on to that Chinook at gunpoint and against their will had been white civilians, then the operation would have been carried out with a damned sight more civility!’
Paul leaned back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other, his foot tapping the air and revealing a flash of a startling emerald sock. ‘I thought you said the officer in charge was black?’
‘I did. For all I know, the majority of black servicemen may have more empathy with the Vietnamese than their white counterparts, but the one I came across today didn’t.’
His rage was so white-hot, so naive, that Paul suppressed a cynical smile. He could vaguely remember reacting the same way himself when he had first arrived, but that had been over a year ago. Since then, in order to survive, he had learned the art of remaining aloof from the insanity surrounding him. It was an art Gavin would no doubt learn too, in time.
‘There are always two points of view to every argument,’ he said, reaching for a glass and a bottle and pouring himself two fingers of whiskey. ‘From the American military point of view, creating free fire zones makes sense.’ He raised a hand to silence Gavin. ‘Once the villages in a Viet Cong-infested area have been destroyed, and their inhabitants removed to a safe place, then the Viet Cong have nothing and no one to shelter them. They become clearly identifiable targets. And they can be attacked without the lives of innocent civilians being put at risk.’
‘If they are still there to attack!’ Gavin snorted derisively. ‘Which they won’t be! And while they scarper off to new pastures, we destroy homes and communities and create hundreds of thousands of refugees. And that’s another point!’ He ran his hand through his hair. ‘Why the hell are they referred to as refugees? They’re not refugees, and calling them that distorts the truth of this situation. They’re evacuees, and that’s what they should be called!’
‘That could be the beginning of the end,’ Paul said dryly. ‘Before you know where you are, even enemy WBLCs would be given their right name.’
‘WBLCs?’
‘Waterborne logistics craft.’
‘What the hell are they?’
‘Sampans,’ Paul said with a grin. ‘Come on, let’s go to the Continental for a drink. I want to know why you described the camp the villagers were transferred to as a concentration camp.’
It was a planned shantytown, Gavin wrote later that day to Gabrielle, miles from anywhere, with no paddy fields for the villagers to farm, and no trees for shade. All the surrounding ground had been bulldozed flat so that there was no vegetation to give cover to any Viet Cong. To keep the Viet Cong away, the tin-roofed houses were surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers. The place was dirty, dusty, and utterly soulless. The refugees already living there were sullen and resentful, and who can blame them? If they weren’t Viet Cong sympathizers before they were uprooted from their land, then they must surely be Viet Cong sympathizers now. But the Americans can’t see it. This morning’s operation was described officially as being a great success, the ‘removal of several score villagers from a place of insecurity to a place of safety’.
In his last letter, he had written about his meeting with Nhu, and had only, hinted that he might meet Dinh, saying that he was ‘looking forward to meeting the rest of her family quite soon’. Now he wrote: I love you and I miss you, and I’m beginning to love this country too, or at least the un-Americanized bits! Tu Do Street has to be seen to be believed! It’s like the worst parts of Las Vegas and Los Angeles all rolled into one and the clubs make the Black Cat seem a model of respectability!
The rest of Gavin’s week was spent covering the routine briefings at the Follies. US airforce and navy jets had begun a major campaign to wipe out fuel installations in the Hanoi-Haiphong area, and the briefings were even longer than normal, the hundred or so journalists in attendance asking a lot of questions about the escalation of the war.
He was alone in the bureau office, typing, when the door opened and to his utter astonishment Nhu stepped a trifle uncertainly into the room.
‘Is it all right if I come in?’ she asked hesitantly, looking around and seeing with relief that he was alone.
‘But of course!’ He was on his feet, pulling a chair away from one of the other desks so that she could sit down.
She shook her head when he motioned her to sit. ‘No. I am not staying, Gavin. I have come to tell you that the time is now. Dinh has sent someone to escort you to him.’
‘When? Now? This very minute?’
She nodded.
‘But I can’t, Nhu!’ he protested. ‘I have to finish my article, tell my bureau chief—’
‘That is precisely what Dinh does not want you to do,’ she said gently. ‘You are to leave now, without speaking to anyone either here or at the Continental.’
Through the screen door of thick, inch-square wire meshing, he could see a small Renault, a Vietnamese at the wheel.
‘I can’t possibly, Nhu! To disappear without a word would arouse far more problems than it would solve!’
‘You are to leave a note, which I am to make sure your bureau chief receives,’ Nhu said, unperturbed. ‘And you are not to return to the Continental for a change of clothes. A change of clothes has already been arranged for you.’
He gazed around him helplessly. His half-finished article protruding from his typewriter read: China has reacted by calling the bombing of the fuel installations in the Hanoi-Haiphong areas, ‘barbarous and wanton acts that have further freed us from any bounds of restrictions in helping North Vietnam’. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what he had planned to type next.
‘You must write your note now,’ Nhu said. ‘The messenger Dinh has sent will not wait for you more than a few minutes.’
Gavin groaned. He had no choice but to write a note to Paul and disappear in the waiting Renault, but he was well aware that it was an action that could cost him his job.
‘How long will I be away, Nhu?’ he asked, reaching for a sheet of typing paper.
‘I do not know. Three or four days. Perhaps a week.’
He scrawled: Paul. Something huge has come up. Will explain all when I return, possibly end of week. Gavin.
He propped it on Paul’s desk, praying that when he returned it would be such a big story that forgiveness would be automatic, and followed Nhu out into the street.
‘I am not going with you,’ she said as the Renault’s driver indicated to him that he should sit in the rear of the car. ‘I am to stay here and make sure that your note is found and read.’ She hesitated and then said, her voice trembling slightly, ‘When you see my brother, tell him that I miss him.’
He nodded, stepping into the Renault’s stiflingly hot interior.
The car sped out of the city through Cholon, the Chinese quarter, the driver remaining uncommunicably silent. Since he knew it would be a waste of time to ask where they were going or how long the trip would take, Gavin did neither. He sat back, looking out of the window at paddyfields and swamps and canals, wondering if they were on the road that ran northwest from Saigon to Phnom Penh in Cambodia, and how far they could possibly go before being stopped and questioned by the police or the military.
Some ten or eleven kilometres from Saigon they careened into a small village looking much the same as the other villages they had driven through. This time, however, they turned off the road, bumping and swaying into a dusty alley between closely packed thatched-roof houses built of bamboo and corrugated iron.
‘Are we here?’ Gavin asked in Vietnamese. It was the first time he had spoken, and the driver’s eyes flew wide at the shock of being spoken to by a round-eye in his own language.
‘I return to Saigon,’ he said uninformatively as two black-pyjama-clad figures emerged from the nearest house, Soviet Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles in their hands.
The men began to walk towards the car and Gavin, suspecting that he was not going to be a passenger on his companion’s return trip, opened the rear door and stepped out into the blistering midday heat. He didn’t wait for the men to approach but took the initiative, walking confidently towards them.
‘Cháo,’ he said, smiling tentatively and shaking their hands firmly.
‘You are Mr Gavin Ryan?’ one of them asked in Vietnamese.
Gavin nodded.
‘Your press accreditation card, please.’
Gavin removed his card from his shirt pocket, and handed it to him. The man, in his black pyjamas and sandals made out of discarded truck tyres, scrutinized it as carefully as if he were a civil servant in a government office.
‘Thank you,’ he said, handing the card back to Gavin. ‘Please follow me.’
Gavin hesitated for a fraction of a second. Behind him the Renault’s engine revved into life, in front of him the door of the nearest thatched-roof house opened, revealing an intimidatingly dark interior. The man who hadn’t yet spoken to him walked across to the Renault, exchanged a few words with the driver, and then the Renault began to back out of the alley, raising a cloud of dense dust.
Gavin turned and watched it for a moment. Then he followed the man who had been speaking to him into the house.
It took his eyes several seconds to adjust to the gloom. When they did so, he looked round him in astonishment. He had expected to find Dinh in the room. There was no one, just a few functional articles, a sleeping pallet, a table, two chairs, a grate for a fire, and a few cooking pots.
The Vietnamese handed him the suitcase that had been removed from the rear of the car. ‘Are you armed? Have you a gun? A knife?’ he asked.
Gavin shook his head and the man ran his hands swiftly and efficiently over him.
‘Good,’ he said, satisfied. ‘You are to come with us, Comrade Ryan. This way, please.’
The Vietnamese who had so far remained silent kicked the cooking pots away from the grate with his foot and then squatted down, plunging his hand into the middle of a pile of cold ashes.
Gavin watched, mystified, and then his mystification changed to disbelief as the Vietnamese pulled hard, lifting open a small wooden trapdoor. As the man eased himself into the opening, dropping feetfirst out of sight, his companion turned to Gavin.
‘This way,’ he said again, and Gavin was almost sure there was a gleam of relish in his eyes as he motioned him forwards.
If he had been as chunkily built as Jimmy Giddings, or as big-boned as Lestor McDermott, his adventure would have ended there, before it had begun, because there would have been no way Jimmy or Lestor could have eased themselves down through the narrow opening. As it was, he was almost as slight as the Vietnamese and with a last longing look toward the open door of the house and sunlight, he lowered himself into the claustrophobic darkness.
The shaft dropped into a tunnel, not high enough to walk in, but large and wide enough to wriggle along. It did not run straight. It zig-zagged, and every now and then there would be a cavity hollowed out in the tunnel’s side, just deep enough for a human body to squeeze into. Sweat was pouring into his eyes and his breathing was harsh and rasping. He wondered how on earth the tunnel was ventilated, where it lead, and then, after about thirty-five to forty yards, they came to a second trapdoor which opened on to another shaft, which led deeper into the earth.
When he had entered the tunnel he had imagined that it led, after a few yards, to an underground hiding place. He never imagined that it would be so long and complex. There was bamboo lining the tunnel roof now, and they kept coming to intersections where other tunnels led off blackly.
Something scurried past his face, and he hit out blindly with his hands, barely controlling his panic. Had it been a spider? He hated spiders and he knew that in the tropics all spiders were likely to be poisonous. He was trembling violently, barely able to control his rising panic. It would be over soon. It couldn’t go on for much longer. They would reach their destination. There would be light and air.
And the return? He wouldn’t think about returning, only about arriving without disgracing himself by betraying his claustrophobia and his fear of whatever insect life was present but unseen.
Just when he thought he could continue no longer, faint light permeated the darkness and the Vietnamese in front of him scrambled from his belly on to his feet, standing upright.
Two seconds later Gavin was gratefully doing the same thing. He stared around him. The light was not daylight. It was the light of an improvised oil lamp, an old medicine bottle with a wick in it, and he was not in a shaft leading upward, as he had hoped, but in a chamber large enough to hold ten or twelve people. At a makeshift desk a Vietnamese wearing the green uniform of the North Vietnamese Army sat writing. The two black-clad Vietnamese waited respectfully for him to look up from his work. When he did so, he said only, ‘Colonel Duong is waiting for you, Comrades.’
With every muscle in his body aching from the effort of his crawl, and his skin drenched with perspiration, Gavin followed his Vietnamese companions across the chamber and into another tunnel, this time one that was high enough to walk in upright. There was a dull rumble and the ground shook above them, a scattering of earth falling on to their heads. ‘It is the big monkeys,’ the Vietnamese who had done all the earlier talking, said to him. ‘They are bombing the Boi Loi Woods.’
By big monkeys, Gavin assumed that his companion referred to the Americans. He wondered if Australians were also referred to in the same derogatory manner.
The chamber they walked into was as big as the previous one, but more comfortably furnished. There was a large table made out of packing cases and planks of wood, around which stood three men, all in North Vietnamese Army uniforms and all looking down at a large scale map. There were other boxes stacked against the wall which appeared to be serving as filing cabinets. And there was a hammock in one corner, and a smaller table on which was a lamp made out of an old menthol bottle, a dagger, a rifle, and a rice bag.
The men looked up, and the smallest of them, the one standing centrally and facing Gavin, said, ‘I am Colonel Duong Quynh Dinh. Welcome to the tunnels of Cu Chi, Comrade Ryan.’
‘I’m very pleased to be here,’ Gavin said, trying to suppress his feeling of being entombed and to inject a note of sincerity into his voice.
Gabrielle’s uncle looked far older than his forty-two years – the lean, wiry figure with not an ounce of excess flesh on his bones and a taut, heavily lined face seemed nearer to fifty-two.
He moved from behind the desk, walking up to Gavin, standing in front of him and holding his eyes for what seemed an eternity.
‘I am told that you are a journalist and that your sympathies are with us, Comrade?’ he said at last.
Gavin nodded. If Dinh was under the impression that he was a committed Communist, now did not seem the time or the place to enlighten him.
‘And that you are my nephew-in-law?’
Gavin felt a tremor of relief. By publicly acknowledging the family connection, Dinh was giving him credentials in the eyes of the other North Vietnamese.
‘Yes.’ He unbuttoned his shirt pocket. ‘I have brought two photographs for you, Colonel. One of them is Gabrielle and myself on our wedding day, the other is of your sister, Vanh.’
Dinh took them, looking down at them for a long time. Gavin knew that Dinh had not seen Vanh for several years, and that he had never seen Gabrielle.
‘It is a long time since I have seen some members of my family,’ Dinh said to him, taking a small notebook from his pocket and slipping the two photographs between the leaves. ‘It is a hard price to pay for victory, but it is a price that I and my fellow comrades pay willingly.’
He motioned Gavin forwards towards the table. ‘Let me tell you something about the area you are in, Comrade.’ He indicated a point on the map some twenty kilometres northwest of Saigon. ‘This is Cu Chi district.’ He circled an area of small villages clustered astride Route One. ‘Here are the villages of An Nhon Tay and Phu My Hung, referred to by the Americans as the Ho Bo Woods. Phu My Hung is our area command post.’ To the north of the area Gavin could see a faint blue line indicating the Saigon River. ‘It is a district that was important to us in our war with the French, and that is important to us now, in our war with the Americans.’
‘Because of its strategic significance?’ Gavin interposed, trying hard to sound intelligent enough to warrant the confidence being placed in him.
Dinh nodded. ‘Yes. As you see, the main road linking Phnom Penh and Saigon runs through Cu Chi, as does the Saigon River. We need to control these routes in order to bring supplies in from Cambodia.’ He paused, and something that could have been a hint of a smile touched the hard line of his mouth. ‘When I was a boy, this area was very green, very lush.’
Gavin knew that most of it was anything but green and lush now. A huge American army base had been built in the area, and in January a large-scale American military operation, code-named CRIMP had poured hundreds of troops into the countryside around Cu Chi in an effort to clear it of Viet Cong, and to secure it. In case they overlooked any Viet Cong, B-52s had then pounded the area with thirty-ton loads of high explosives.
‘Were the tunnels here in January, when the area was bombed?’ he asked, forgetting his claustrophobia as his reporter’s intense interest in the story took over.
Again Gavin saw a faint glimmer of a smile. ‘The tunnels have been here ever since the days when we fought the French. Every hamlet and village in the area built its own underground network where guerrilla fighters could hide, and from where they could launch surprise attacks upon the French Army. Now the tunnels have been repaired and extended. They cover an area from the Cambodian border to the outskirts of Saigon.’
If there had been a chair handy, Gavin would have gratefully sat down upon it. All the time he had been studying about Vietnam, preparing himself to come to Vietnam, he had never read a word referring to the enemy’s use of tunnels. Paul hadn’t mentioned the tunnels, nor had Jimmy or Lestor, which meant that they did not know about them. He felt like whooping with elation. When Paul read his story about Cu Chi, he wouldn’t give a damn about the way he had disappeared without so much as a by-your-leave. He certainly wouldn’t get the sack. He would get the press bureau’s equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize!
‘Let me give you some idea of the sophistication of our tunnel network, and then I will tell you why it is that I asked you to come to Cu Chi, and what it is that North Vietnam would like from you,’ Dinh said, leading the way out of the chamber.
Gavin took a deep breath and followed him. He was beginning to feel slightly more acclimatized now and his interest superseded his fear.
For sixty yards or so at a time they would wriggle on their bellies like giant underground moles, and then they would scramble upright in a large chamber that served as a dormitory or an ammunition dump or a first-aid station. There was even a kitchen.
‘Where does the smoke go?’ Gavin asked, perplexed.
‘It is ducted through several channels and finally escapes, greatly diffused, through ground-level chimneys a good distance from any tunnel entrance. Though most of our food is eaten cold,’ Dinh said, a note of regret in his voice.
The strenuously physical tour continued. There were ventilation shafts and wells. There were false tunnels near some entrances, leading nowhere. There were dead ends. There were booby traps for any American soldier so enterprising as to discover an entrance and see through the false trails.
The booby traps were nearly Gavin’s undoing. He was just congratulating himself on the way he had adjusted to the dark and the bodily stenches that poisoned the air, when there was a strange scuffling sound and Dinh wriggled into one of the hollows carved out of the tunnel’s side that served as both a hiding place and a passing place.
‘We will go no farther in this direction,’ Dinh said, lighting a small candle to give light. ‘It leads to a booby-trapped entrance. Can you see?’
In the flickering light of the candle, Gavin saw ahead of him, a mere three or four feet away, three huge rats reared on their haunches, teeth bared.
‘Jesus God!’
He forgot all about making a favourable impression, about gaining Dinh’s esteem. He jettisoned backwards, his terror overwhelming. He was unable to turn around in the narrow tunnel, unable to move fast, fast, fast enough, and there was a gurgling animal sound coming from his throat as he tried to put distance between himself and the creatures of nightmare in front of him.
‘They cannot harm you, Comrade,’ Dinh said, chuckling. ‘They are tethered by the neck.’
Gavin did not care. He continued to scramble backwards, throwing the Vietnamese who had been accompanying them on their tour into noisy retreat. Not until he was again in one of the large chambers, the red clay walls civilizingly covered in looted US parachute nylon, did he come to a sweat-soaked, shivering halt.
‘You were right to give our unpleasant friends a wide berth,’ Dinh said to him when he rejoined him. ‘They have been infected with bubonic plague. If anyone should discover that particular entrance, a trapdoor can be lowered, sealing that part of the tunnel from the rest of the complex. The leash tethering the rats can be severed from this side of the trapdoor, and the rats let loose. Once greeted in such a manner, we do not expect to be troubled further.’
Gavin tried to say that he was certain they would never be troubled, ever again, but he was still incapable of speech.
‘We will eat now,’ Dinh said, saving him from disgracing himself further. ‘And then I will tell you what it is that we want from you.’
All six of them ate together, the two Vietnamese who had initially escorted him through the tunnels, and the two middle-aged but exceedingly tough-looking North Vietnamese officers who had been closeted with Dinh when he had first arrived. From the lack of comment about the food, Gavin assumed that it must be their normal fare: cold rice supplemented by the merest sliver of chicken, and accompanied by water in tin mugs.
Gavin had never been so thirsty in his life, and his initial instinct was to gulp the water down. Then it occurred to him that there was no way that the water would have been boiled. He crossed his fingers. He had to drink, and he had to hope for the best.
When the food had been eaten, Dinh settled himself on a rough wooden chair behind the desk. ‘Perhaps you have heard of a journalist by the name of Wilfred Burchett, Comrade?’
Gavin nodded. Wilfred Burchett was world-famous as being the journalist who, in the days of Dien Bien Phu, had interviewed and become a friend of Ho Chi Minh. He was Australian, no longer young, and because of his fiercely held political sympathies, was regarded by fellow journalists as something of a maverick.
‘There are very few foreign journalists of the calibre of Mr Burchett,’ Dinh was saying. ‘Journalists who report to the West the truth of what is happening in our country. Too many of them are misled by the false proclamations of victory coming from the American imperialists and their Saigon puppets.’
He paused, and Gavin felt a tingle run down his spine. Was Dinh going to ask him to assume the role of Burchett to his Ho Chi Minh? And if so, how could he possibly accept? He wasn’t a freelance journalist able to write what he liked, when he liked. He was a news agency reporter. Whatever he wrote, even if it passed Paul Dulles’s critical eye, it would be edited again in the Paris head office. When it reached the newspaper offices it was destined for, it would be edited again by a subeditor, who would put a headline on the story, place it in the paper, and cut it to fit. And the interference with the original story didn’t end there. With agency stories it was customary for editors to merge the story with one on the same subject by their own correspondent.
To write stories covering Viet Cong activities, and to expect that they would be published in a form acceptable to the North Vietnamese, would be impossible for anyone but a freelance journalist with an established reputation.
‘The Hanoi government has requested that you stay with us as our guest, Comrade,’ Dinh said, confirming his suspicions. ‘Like Mr Burchett, you will record our fight for freedom, and you will record the crimes of the American imperialists.’
Adrenaline began to pump along Gavin’s veins. If he understood Dinh correctly, he was being offered the chance to go out on active operations with the Viet Cong. It was the kind of scoop that any journalist would sell his soul for. If the bureau refused to accept the story, on the grounds that there was no corroboration of it from any other source, then he would resign as a member of the staff and chance his luck as a freelancer.
‘I am very honoured to accept your invitation,’ he said, wondering how long he was going to be their guest, and if, now that he had accepted their invitation, he would be allowed to communicate with Paul.
‘That is very good, Comrade,’ Dinh said unexpressively. ‘The people of Vietnam are waiting for a historic moment, a moment when the whole nation will rise up in revolt. The revolutionary forces of Vietnam will very soon show the rest of the world what they can do, and you will have the great privilege of being with them when they are victorious.’
Gavin frowned slightly. They had been speaking sometimes in French, sometimes in Vietnamese, and though Dinh spoke in the same regional accent as Vanh, obviously he had misunderstood something. However optimistic the North Vietnamese were of eventually attaining their aims, no one could imagine that those aims were going to be attained in the next few days or weeks.
‘When I return here, will I be met and brought by car in the same manner as I was this morning?’ he asked, assuming that his assignment was to be an ongoing one.
‘I am afraid you have not quite comprehended, Comrade,’
Dinh said, a note of genuine regret in his voice. ‘You will not be returning here because you will not be leaving here, at least you will not be leaving here for Saigon. My mission in the South is completed, and in five days’ time I shall begin the journey north, up the Ho Chi Minh Trail. When I do so, you will accompany me.’
Gavin stared at him. Of course. He should have known from the beginning. He hadn’t been blindfolded on his journey to Cu Chi. Secrets that the Americans would have given a ransom for had been carelessly revealed to him. And they had been so because all along his hosts had known that he would never be able to communicate what he had seen, not unless they wanted him to communicate it. He wasn’t their guest. For reasons that he still didn’t fully comprehend, he was their prisoner.
‘Can I choose to change my mind and refuse your invitation?’ he asked quietly.
Dinh shook his head. ‘No, Comrade. You have no choice. You have had no choice ever since the moment when you stepped into the car outside the bureau office.’
He wondered if Nhu had known Dinh’s intentions, and was sure that she had not. His only consolation was that she did at least know who it was he had gone to meet, and she would be able to tell Gabrielle.
Gabrielle. He closed his eyes, knowing with dreadful certainty that he was not going to see her again for a very long time, that he was not going to see her again for years.