Gavin’s emotions were in turmoil the five days that he spent with Dinh in the tunnels of Cu Chi. His main worry was Gabrielle. Somehow he had to let her know that he was alive and safe, yet he had no reliable means of doing so. Nhu would certainly write Gaby that he had been going to meet Dinh, but he was convinced that Nhu did not know Dinh planned to abduct him, and that she would be as alarmed and perplexed by his continuing absence as Gaby.
Dinh promised him that Nhu had been told about the mission, and that he was alive and well. Gavin hoped and prayed that he was speaking the truth.
‘Because of the urgency with which my report is being awaited in Hanoi, our trek north will not be as arduous as it has been for me in the past,’ Dinh said to him in a moment of rare confidence. ‘Once we leave the Iron Triangle we will travel most of the way by jeep.’
Tingles prickled down Gavin’s spine. He had heard the phrase ‘Iron Triangle’ before, on American lips. The area was rumoured to cover sixty square miles, and ever since the Second World War it had been a refuge for antigovernment forces. The area was cut by marshes and swamps and open rice paddies, and huge stretches of forest so thick that only foot trails could penetrate them, making penetration by American and South Vietnamese forces nearly impossible. It was in this area, to the northwest of Saigon and bordering the Cambodian border, that the Office of South Vietnam was rumoured to have its headquarters. Was that where they were going? To COSVN? To Viet Cong headquarters?
He knew better than to ask. Vietnamese were secretive by nature, and asking would end Dinh’s quite extraordinary candour. The mystery of the COSVN’s location obsessed the Americans. Jimmy Giddings had spoken of it as if it were a miniature Pentagon buried deep in the jungle, though when he had done so, Paul Dulles had corrected him, saying that in his opinion COSVN wasn’t a place or a building, but that it was people.
Whatever it was, the Americans had gone to enormous lengths to find it and to bomb it into oblivion. So far, unsuccessfully. And now Gavin was probably going to walk right into it. If he had to wait a year before he could file his story, it would be worthwhile. He would have the scoop of a lifetime.
In the five days he spent in the tunnels, the area came under American surveillance three times. The first time, as US troops swarmed over the ground above them, they were so near that Gavin could smell their aftershave lotion.
‘How can they not sense our presence?’ he whispered to Dinh as the troops moved away, oblivious that they had been within feet of a North Vietnamese Army platoon, and an entire regiment of Viet Cong.
A slight smile touched Dinh’s hard, straight mouth. ‘Americans are not attuned to the earth as we Vietnamese. They look for the obvious. Even when they do stumble on to a tunnel entrance, it does not occur to them that it is anything but a short, underground bolt-hole. The trapdoors leading into the main complex are rarely discovered.’ He paused, his eyes gleaming in the light from the makeshift oil lamp. ‘And when they are, the discoverer does not usually live to tell the tale.’
Two days later Gavin saw first-hand what happened when a tunnel entrance was discovered. He and Dinh, and the handful of NVA men who were with Dinh, had been moving steadily through the tunnels in a northwesterly direction. The other occupants of the labyrinthine tunnel system were all Viet Cong. Their numbers staggered Gavin. Entire platoons were moving with ease beneath ground that was rigorously patrolled by South Vietnamese and American forces.
At one point they rested near a conference chamber where a small group of black-clad figures were in urgent conversation. On seeing Dinh, the leader of the group immediately approached him with slightly awed deference. Gavin could hear words that sounded like the name of a village, and then the Vietnamese name for Americans, but very little else. When the man had returned to his waiting companions, Dinh turned towards Gavin with a slight shrug of irritation.
‘We are going to be delayed. The man who just spoke to me is the political commissar of the local defence force. The Americans swooped on his village a little less than an hour ago and in their search they found a tunnel entrance. They have blown the trapdoor away and are at the moment waiting for reinforcements before attempting to explore it further.’
‘What will happen when they do? Will they simply lob dynamite down here?’ Gavin asked, trying to sound casual about the prospect of being blasted into eternity.
‘Our tunnels are too cleverly made for them to be able to cause much damage to the main complex from an entrance,’ Dinh replied, a glimmer of amusement in his voice. ‘We will go a little nearer and I will explain to you the steps that are being taken in order to turn events to our advantage.’
They were back to wriggling, bellydown, through the narrow communication tunnels. Above him, vibrating through the dark red earth, Gavin could hear the whump-whump-whump of helicopter rotor blades. They went up a three-foot shaft and into another communication tunnel and then Dinh motioned for him to crawl into a side alcove. Ahead of them Gavin could dimly discern the dark shape of another figure, a Viet Cong with his back towards them, crouched and waiting.
Ten minutes passed and then, as the sweat began to run into Gavin’s eyes, there came the vibration of voices and feet above them. No matter how many Americans had been brought in by helicopter, only one could enter the tunnel at a time. And when he did, the waiting Viet Cong would kill him.
Gavin began to shake. The situation was pure nightmare. He had to remain hunched and silent as an American slid into the tunnel to his death. If he called out he would probably be able to save him, but his own life would be forfeit.
There was the sound of a small earth fall, and Gavin knew the American was beginning his descent into the entrance shaft. All entrance shafts were shallow, little more than three feet in depth, and now Gavin saw why. The American had entered feet first, and as his feet touched the bottom of the shaft, and while his head and torso were still above ground, the Viet Cong several yards ahead of them fired at point-blank range into his undefended lower body.
Gavin clenched his nails so tight into his palms that he drew blood. At that moment he knew he had lost any innocence remaining to him. From now on he would feel, and be, old beyond his years.
There were cries of terror and agony from the wounded man, shouts of alarm from his comrades as they struggled to pull him free.
The Viet Cong in front of them had now turned towards them and was wriggling rapidly back down the tunnel towards the shaft leading into the lower communication tunnel. He paused, his hand flying once again to his pistol as he neared the side alcoves and he saw Gavin’s pale, distinctly western face.
‘De ve nha,’ Dinh said softly. The Viet Cong stared hard at him for a moment and then continued his rapid retreat.
Gavin and Dinh followed hard on his heels. Behind him Gavin could hear the wounded American yelling desperately, ‘For Christ’s sake get me the hell outta here before that goddammed gook cuts off my balls!’
Gavin knew damn well that when they did get him out, a barrage of firepower would be directed down the tunnel at their rear, and he propelled himself at top speed down the next, slightly deeper shaft, and into the second communications tunnel.
The Viet Cong had inserted himself into an alcove near the trapdoor above the shaft, and Gavin and Dinh wriggled past him like eels, not pausing until they had reached the trapdoor leading down into the main tunnel network.
‘What happens now?’ Gavin spat at him.
‘If we are unlucky, they will throw gas canisters into the entrance shaft. The zigzag of the tunnels and the ventilation system will prevent the gas from poisoning the central complex, but there is not much chance that we would escape the fumes. If we are lucky, the Americans will do what they usually do. They will enter the first tunnel with the intention of rooting out whoever it was who injured their comrade.’
From Dinh’s words Gavin realized with shock that it was possible the Americans still had no idea the tunnel could be anything other than a small, localized hiding place big enough to give shelter to one or two guerrillas.
In the darkness he could sense rather than see Dinh’s rare smile. ‘You will see that though we are now at a trapdoor leading down into the main tunnel system, this particular tunnel does not stop here. It continues on for another twenty-five yards.’
‘Where does it lead?’ Gavin whispered, listening fearfully for sounds of action from the first shaft.
‘It leads nowhere. And if my comrades’ plans are successful, it is all the Americans will ever find.’
There came the sound of first one pair of booted feet dropping cautiously to the floor of the first shaft, and then another.
‘We must retreat to the main tunnel network to give my comrade room to manoeuvre. I will tell you what it is he is doing as he is doing it,’ Dinh said, opening the trapdoor and slithering down into the black hole beyond.
Gavin followed quickly. As far as he was concerned, Dinh could have explained the entire exercise verbally, without having risked both their lives by bringing him along to watch.
Gunfire reverberated from the first communications tunnel down into the tunnel in which they were lying. Earth showered over them and Gavin was gripped by a new fear, a fear so terrible it almost made him lose control of his bowels. What if hand grenades and dynamite were thrown into the tunnel? What if the earth fell down in a wall both behind and in front of them? What if they were buried alive?
‘The Americans are now entering,’ Dinh whispered unnecessarily. ‘My comrade will have removed the trapdoor to the second shaft and will be crouched in it, waiting for them.’
‘And the gunfire?’ Gavin whispered back, the blood pounding in his ears, his heart hammering so fast he thought it was going to give out.
‘The Americans, firing down the tunnel ahead of them.’
Gavin wiped dry red clay from his face. The bullets would not find their mark. Their target was not hiding in the darkness ahead of them, but was concealed in a shaft leading downwards.
‘What happens when the Americans crawl so far along the tunnel that they come to the shaft?’
‘Wait,’ Dinh said, his voice tense. ‘And you will find out.’
A split second later the roar of an AK-47 blasted Gavin’s eardrums. The whole earth shook around them as first one clip was let off and then another. Screams tore through the dank, enclosed darkness, and Gavin could feel his self-control galloping away from him. He didn’t know if the screams were from the Viet Cong or the Americans, and he didn’t care. He was bathed in pure terror. He wanted out. He wanted out as he had never wanted out before.
Dinh had begun to move again, wriggling fast and furiously deeper and deeper into the main tunnel network. When at last he reached an alcove and paused, he gasped out, ‘That moment, as the Americans approach the second shaft, is the most dangerous moment of all. If they had rolled a hand grenade ahead of them and it had fallen into the shaft, then our comrade would have been killed. As it was, he waited until they were nearly on top of him and then he jackknifed out of the shaft in front of them, taking them by surprise.’
There came the sound of someone wriggling with practiced ease towards them, away from the hell of the continuing screams.
‘It will be a long time before the Americans are able to remove their dead and wounded,’ Dinh said comfortably. ‘When they do, and when they pluck up the nerve to investigate again they will find the tunnel empty. The trapdoor to the second shaft will have been replaced, and will be indiscernible to them. They will simply crawl along the tunnel and into the decoy tunnel. At the far end of it they will find an escape hatch, assume that the guerrilla who inflicted the damage on them has escaped by it, and very thankfully regard their mission as complete. The dummy tunnel they have found will be dynamited and destroyed, and there will be no damage to the main network.’
The guerrilla who had, single-handed, inflicted such horrendous damage on the Americans slithered abreast of them.
‘Khong xau,’ Dinh said to him warmly.
Behind them, beyond the closed trapdoor, dull cries could still be heard. As Dinh and his comrade began to wriggle back towards the main complex of conference chamber and kitchen and sleeping chambers, Gavin followed them, consumed by horror and relief. He no longer felt like a journalist. He felt like a traitor. Not until he experienced an American bombing raid on Phu Hoa village some five days later did his sense of balance return.
They had left the tunnels behind them and their small party, consisting of himself and Dinh and two of Dinh’s aides, had been travelling northwest at night, by bicycle.
‘We will be able to replenish our supplies and rest at Phu Hoa,’ Dinh said to him as the night sky began to pearl to grey, presaging dawn, ‘I will also be able to renew some family contacts. A second cousin of mine is married to the local village chief and I have not seen her since we were children.’
Gavin was trying to work out what the relationship between Gaby and the village chief’s wife must be, when dawn broke in a blazing crack of yellow and orange and crimson-rose, and the planes came.
There was no warning. There had been no sounds of gunfire, no indication that any engagement was taking place in the vicinity between Viet Cong and ARVN or US troops. In the early dawn light the countryside looked spectacularly beautiful and peaceful.
They were bicycling through a plantation of banana and mango trees and there was very little low vegetation to hamper their progress. After the claustrophobia of the runnels, the long night ride with humid air blowing soft against his face had been paradisiacal. In the light of the rising sun, Gavin could see a cluster of straw-thatched houses ahead. There would be breakfast of sorts. Eggs, if they were lucky, and almost certainly fruit. He was happy. He had survived what had to be the worst part of the ordeal, the tunnels at Cu Chi. He had established an amazingly close rapport with Dinh. And he had a news story that, when it was told, would establish his reputation as a war reporter.
It was Dinh who heard the planes first. ‘B-52s!’ he yelled, throwing himself from his bicycle headlong on to the ground, his hands over his ears. Almost simultaneously the two young NVA officers riding with him followed suit. Gavin crashed to the ground a mere split second behind them. The planes never broke the early morning cloud cover. They could have been B-52s as Dinh averred. They could also have been Phantoms or F-105s. Whatever they were, they were unloading everything that they carried on to the unsuspecting village.
Even with his hands pressed tight over his ears, Gavin could hear the whistling of the bombs as they fell. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ he whispered beneath his breath, and then he was rocked almost senseless by the sound of the explosions. The ground heaved and kicked beneath him, giant fissures cracking wide. He dug his elbows and feet into the earth to gain some kind of purchase, but it was impossible. His body wouldn’t adhere to the ground. He was plucked from it as if he were a dry leaf and carried amid a maelstrom of felled trees and gouged earth. When at last his body slammed back on to the ground he was fifty yards from where he had dived from his bicycle. There was no sign now of the bicycle. There was no sign of Dinh or the accompanying NVA officers. There was only a choking cloud of thick dust, the crackle of leaping flames, and the terrified screams of women and children.
He tried to crawl to his feet, but his legs wouldn’t support him. Twice he stumbled and fell before managing to stay upright and run swaying towards the village and the flames and the screams. Through the dust and still-falling debris he saw Dinh and veered pantingly towards him.
‘Why?’ he shouted to him, unable to hear his own voice. Unable to hear anything. ‘What was the provocation? The reason?’
Dinh was shouting back at him, and like a lip-reader he read the words, ‘No reason! There doesn’t have to be a reason! Perhaps a US platoon is held down some miles from here and called in air support! Perhaps it is a matter of confused targeting! Perhaps it is a matter of the pilots merely off-loading their bombs! This, Comrade, is the war as suffered by the peasants. This is why you are here. To see and experience it.’
While Dinh had been shouting across at him, they had been running in the direction of the village. The two young NVA officers were also on their feet and running. Their small party had miraculously sustained no injuries, but then, they had been on the periphery of the attack. It was the village that had sustained the full blast of the bombs.
They ran past the dead and dying buffalo, past terrified children running out into the banana and mango plantations away from the engulfing flames.
‘Christ! What do we do when we get there!’ Gavin yelled desperately. ‘We have no medical kits! No plasma! We can’t get these people to a hospital!’
Dinh turned his head towards him and smiled. It was a terrible smile. ‘War is a different game without dust offs and quick evacuation to a military hospital, eh, Comrade?’
Gavin did not reply. They were among the injured who had managed to escape from the flames. A girl of about ten years old was laid on the ground, hideous gurgling noises coming from her throat. Her chest had been stoved in, the skin burnt and withered. One arm had been blown off just above the elbow joint, and though the upper portion of her face was still recognizable, the lower half was a nightmare of charred flesh.
Gavin fell on his knees beside her. He had nothing with which to ease her agony. There was not one damned things that he could do for her. ‘Oh God, oh Jesus!’ he sobbed as Dinh grabbed hold of his arm, pulling him away, dragging him onward.
The dead and dying lay scattered over a wide area. Although dawn had only just broken, several of the men had already been making their way towards their rice paddies. A small boy whose task was to care for the family buffalo lay dead beside it in a dyke, the rope with which the animal had been tethered still held tightly in his hand.
A Vietnamese wearing only a loose pair of cotton trousers ran through the mayhem towards them.
‘See what they have done?’ he cried to Dinh. ‘See what they have done to my village!’
He was weeping, beating his bony chest with his fists. ‘They have killed Sang! They have murdered the mother of my children!’
Dinh had his arms around him, hugging him tight, and then he was saying, ‘Where is she? Take me to her.’
Gavin stumbled after them, aware that the distraught Vietnamese was obviously the village chief and that Sang must be the second cousin Dinh was so looking forward to seeing again.
She had been dragged clear of the flames engulfing the straw-thatched houses and lay on her back on the dusty ground, two small children clinging to her lifeless hand, sobbing fiercely.
Dinh knelt down beside her, his face a carved wooden mask. He felt for a pulse, a heartbeat, and then, his shoulders slumped, he slowly rose once more to his feet.
Gavin looked down at the dead woman. She had been no longer young and had the old, worn look of every peasant woman who was no longer in her early twenties. But her hair was still beautiful. Long and glossy-black, it lay spread around her like a fan.
Gavin felt his throat tighten. Somewhere, however distant, there had been a blood link between this woman and Gaby. Crazily, as he stood in the middle of the bombed and burning, obliterated Vietnamese village, the words of the seventeenth-century English poet and churchman John Donne came into his mind. ‘No mind is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.’
There was nothing more that could be done for Sang, but there were scores of other villagers who needed whatever primitive treatment could be given them.
For the rest of the morning he worked with Dinh, bathing wounds with freshly boiled water, bandaging with makeshift lengths of torn cloth, fixing splints with sawn-off lengths of bamboo. It had been countless hours since he had last slept, and as he wearily helped the villagers to bury their dead, Dinh said to him again, ‘This is why you are here, Comrade. To see and to report.’
Gavin nodded and wiped the sweat from his eyes. The question Dinh would never answer was when would he be allowed to file his report.
They worked all through the long, hot day and then rested briefly with the still-dazed survivors. No one showed surprise that the attack had taken place. No one offered a reason for it. It was possible that the village had been destroyed by criminal accident, and it was equally possible that it had been destroyed because it was reported to be a Viet Cong stronghold. Gavin had no way of knowing which was the truth. He knew only that where the village had existed there was now only a charred crater. And that Sang and dozens of her neighbours had died a hideous and violent death.
At night he, Dinh and the two accompanying NVA officers set off once more, their bicycles freakishly unscathed, heading northwest, towards the Cambodian border and the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
During the following arduous days and nights his rapport with Dinh deepened. Dinh told him why he had decided to go north, and what life had been like for him in the first painful years away from his family.
‘I am a southerner, Comrade. A Saigonese. Even after all these years of living in the North, I am still a Saigonese.’
‘Then what made you leave?’ Gavin asked, excitement gripping his stomach muscles. Dinh’s conversation was almost always conducted in official Communist jargon. The words comrade, imperialist, and puppet regime peppered his every sentence. His present friendly simplicity indicated that confidences might be about to be shared.
‘I left in order to be able to fight the French under the only man who appeared to me to be capable of doing so. That man was Vo Nguyen Giap. At Dien Bien Phu we achieved our success. When we raised our flag over the shattered French command post, all of us who had fought so hard to rid our land of foreign domination were euphoric. We thought that Vietnam would now be governed by officials of our choosing. But then came the Geneva agreement.’
He paused for a long moment. They were sitting around a small campfire after a hard day’s travelling. The two NVA officers had gone down to a nearby lake to try their luck at catching fish, and the only sound was that of insects in the surrounding undergrowth.
Gavin remained silent, waiting. At last Dinh said heavily, ‘Vietnam was to receive independence, but she was also to be temporarily partitioned at the seventeenth parallel until elections were held. The prime minister in the South, Ngo Dinh Diem, reneged on his promise to hold elections, knowing full well that if elections were held, Ho would be in and he would be out.’
The flames crackled and spat. A small lizard ran across Gavin’s booted foot. ‘Under Diem the government in the South became increasingly oppressive. Men who had valiantly fought to free Vietnam of the French were regarded by Diem as rivals for power. They were hunted down and murdered. And it wasn’t only those who actively fought the French who suffered. Very soon even his mildest supporters were herded into prison camps.’
Gavin remembered the countless US statesmen who had declared that South Vietnam was the model of a ‘free world democracy’ which America was committed to defend against the ‘Communist threat’. Had they known the truth? When President Kennedy had made his inaugural address and charismatically stated ‘Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty,’ had he known what kind of government he was supporting in South Vietnam? Had he known the kind of ‘democracy’ it was that he was calling on his countrymen to defend and to perhaps lay down their lives for? Gavin hoped passionately that he had not.
‘It was then I knew that I could not return to Saigon,’ Dinh continued, staring broodingly into the flames. ‘As I had been active in fighting the French, it was only a matter of time before I would have been rounded up and killed. And so I gave my loyalty to the only man worthy of it, Ho Chi Minh.’
There came a sound of leaves being crushed underfoot as the two NVA officers returned from their fishing trip.
‘It must have been very lonely for you,’ Gavin said quietly, knowing how important family was to him.
Dinh nodded, but the two officers were now within earshot and he said merely, ‘From that time on my overriding aim has been the reunification of Vietnam under Communist control. To that end I have relinquished family, personal ambition, and personal happiness.’
The two NVA officers were sitting down beside them, triumphantly displaying their catch. Before he congratulated them, and before he began to help in skewering the fish in order to roast them, Dinh turned his head. His eyes met Gavin’s. ‘And I have no regrets,’ he said simply. ‘None at all.’
For the next two weeks they continued northwest towards Cambodia, travelling only at night. They were heading towards the Fishhook area, where Cambodian territory bulged down into Vietnam like a gigantic teat.
The trail ended on the enormous Mimot rubber plantation. A wooden gate barred the way across the trail and there was a control point manned by half a dozen guards. As Dinh spoke with the guards, discussing him Gavin was sure, he felt dizzy with relief and euphoria. He was at COSVN, the famous Central Office of South Vietnam. No reporter had ever gained entry before him, and he doubted if any would after him. He had scored a momentous first and he burned with the longing to file his story.
‘Come,’ Dinh said to him. The heavy gate was lifted and they were escorted down the trail beyond by two of the guards.
The jungle vegetation on either side of them was thick and lush. Wild orchids ran riot, their wax-white cups stark against the dark green foliage; vines and creepers covered the trees so thick overhead that the sunlight fell through them in bright, slanting bars. Away from the trail, half hidden under the jungle canopy, were houses built peasant-style, and half a dozen long, low buildings with entrances to a tunnel system clearly visible.
They were taken to one of the houses nearest to the trail, and it became clear that only Gavin, under guard, was to be left there.
‘Take this opportunity to rest, Comrade,’ Dinh said as a look of unease flashed across Gavin’s face. ‘I and my companions must make our reports to our superior officers. There is much for us to discuss, and it may be some time before I see you again.’
It was three days. He was fed sparingly on boiled rice, a small hunk of salt, and dried fish. It was a diet he was becoming accustomed to. Looking down at a frame that was becoming increasingly gaunt, he wondered what Gaby would say when she saw him. In the loneliness of his temporary isolation he could almost hear her husky, unchained laughter.
His throat tightened and he clenched his fists. He must not allow his thoughts to dwell longingly on Gaby. If he did, he could become completely unstrung. The only way of surviving the tremendous opportunity that he had been given was by suppressing all thoughts of normality. Like an alcoholic, he had to live one day at a time.
However impressive Dinh’s rank had been at Cu Chi, at COSVN it was dwarfed by the men of real power. Later, when they were in the jeep travelling north again, he learned that not only was General Tran Nam Trung, the commander-in-chief of the National Liberation Forces, one of the senior officers that Dinh had to report to, but that he had also had to make his report to Pham Hung, a Politburo member and first party secretary, and General Hoang Van Thai, commander-in-chief of all northern forces in the South. It was a thunderingly impressive lineup.
‘And now it’s straight ahead for the North,’ Dinh said to him with satisfaction as they vaulted into the jeep that had been provided for them. ‘And think yourself lucky, Comrade, that you are travelling now and not ten years ago when I first made the journey. Then it was nothing but a near-impassable foot track snaking down from the North over the Truong Son mountain range.’
‘Is the route still the same as the original?’ Gavin asked curiously, deeply thankful to be exchanging the discomfort of his bicycle for the relative comfort of the jeep.
Dinh nodded as one of the NVA officers took the wheel. ‘Yes, though now it is not just one single track but a network of routes running roughly parallel with cross-links at strategic intervals.’
‘And for the moment we travel through Cambodia?’
‘For the moment,’ Dinh said, flashing one of his rare smiles.
There were times, in the nights that followed as they bumped and swayed over crated tracks, when Gavin almost longed to be back on a bicycle. Without a map he had only a hazy idea of where they were, and sometimes he was not even sure which country they were in, Cambodia, Vietnam, or Laos.
One night they only narrowly avoided being spotted by enemy planes as they crossed wide fields of thatch near Pleiku. For a little while after that he was able to judge where they were because Pleiku was a name that meant something to him. In February 1965 the Viet Cong had attacked the US base at Pleiku and he remembered it being referred to as a traditional market town in the central highlands.
From then on the route became increasingly mountainous and the amount of heavily camouflaged traffic on the trail continued to amaze him. After crossing the Ben Hai River they had descended into the foothills of the Truong Son. The massive mountain range ran like a backbone through North and South, but now there were no more perilous passes to negotiate. Instead, they were soon in thick forest and it was then, when for the first time attack seemed unlikely, that invisible B-52s bombarded the stretch of trail on which they were travelling.
As before, there was no warning. The world simply erupted around them in an apocalyptic frenzy. Although Gavin learned afterwards that the centre of the bombing had been over a mile away, the sonic roar of explosions tore at his eardrums, reducing him once again to total deafness. The jeep was lifted in the air by the blast and thrown yards off the trail, landing on its side. A blow to his head left him with no memory of how he crawled from the wreckage. He could only remember, as the attack continued, pressing himself into the earth and losing control of both his bladder and his bowels.
When at last it was over, he couldn’t believe that he was alive. He forced himself to his knees, and then to stumble to his feet. ‘Dinh!’ he shouted into a ringing silence. ‘Dinh!’
Fifty yards away two figures moved slowly, lifting themselves cautiously from the ground. Neither of them was Dinh. A new fear gripped Gavin, even worse than the mind-bending fear he had just experienced. ‘Dinh!’ he shouted, his voice cracking. ‘DINH!’
‘I am here, Comrade,’ a voice said from behind him.
Gavin spun around, nearly sick with relief. ‘Christ! I thought you were dead. I thought we were all dead!’
Dinh flashed him one of his rare grins, brushing debris from his uniform. ‘Fear is debilitating, Comrade. You will have to learn not to capitulate to it so easily.’ There was no censure in his voice, only amusement. ‘Let us see if the jeep is still roadworthy. If it isn’t, we have a long trek ahead of us.’
Together the four of them managed to rock the jeep back on to its wheels.
‘The petrol tank is still intact,’ one of the NVA officers said optimistically. ‘I don’t think we’re going to have a problem.’
They didn’t. Ten minutes later, with freshly hacked saplings camouflaging the hood, they were trundling north, again.
‘In another few minutes we shall be on a very safe section of the trail,’ Dinh said to Gavin in confidence.
Gavin looked across at him suspiciously. ‘We’re not going underground again, are we?’
Dinh grinned again. He was beginning to enjoy Gavin’s company. ‘No, Comrade. For the next few miles we are going to travel by stream.’
They didn’t take sampans. Instead, the NVA officer at the wheel simply drove into the shallow water, using the bed of the stream as if it were a road, constantly changing gear as he moved from sandy stretches to pebbled beds or to deeper portions.
‘These sections of the trail are difficult to spot from the air,’ Dinh said, visibly relaxing. ‘The bushes on either bank give natural camouflage and the water erases all traces of movement immediately. Deeper streams are used to good account as well. Supplies are packed into waterproof containers and floated downstream from one supply post to another.’
Gavin believed him. He was beginning to think that there was nothing that he now wouldn’t believe about NVA ingenuity.
The next day, at a busy supply post, they exchanged their battered jeep for a six-wheel-drive ZIL army truck.
‘In which we will drive into Hanoi,’ Dinh said, highly satisfied at the progress they were making. ‘There is no more jungle to negotiate. From here on we should experience no more delays.’
He was overly optimistic. Within an hour they came under attack again, this time from three F-4s. They survived the attack unscathed, but those travelling in trucks ahead of them were not so lucky.
It was dusk the next day when Dinh prodded him lightly in the side and said, ‘You’ve been asleep for the last hour, Comrade. If you sleep any longer, you will miss our entry into Hanoi.’
Gavin shot upright in his seat, his heart beginning to beat in thick, short strokes. Hanoi! Whatever he had envisaged when he had left Paris for Saigon, it had not been this. To be riding in a Russian truck, accompanied by three NVA officers, in to Hanoi! It was incredible! Unbelievable!
The shanty houses of the suburbs gave way to gracious stone-built mansions. On their right-hand side the broad, deep waters of the Lake of the Restored Sword gleamed dully. On their left-hand side, as more houses came into view, Gavin could see that despite their original grandeur, their façades were now crumbling, their paintwork peeling.
‘Your first night in Hanoi will be one of comfort,’ Dinh said, watching Gavin’s reactions to everything with interest. ‘The French built a splendid hotel in the city centre, the Metropole. A room has been booked there for us. You will excuse me this evening if I leave you almost immediately. I have to report to my superiors.’
Gavin nodded, unable to drag his gaze from the sombre streets. They drew up outside a huge, grandiose building that looked unutterably drab. But still Gavin was overwhelmed at his good fortune. He was in Hanoi. Hanoi. With luck he would soon be interviewing General Giap. Possibly even Ho himself.