Farewell Uncle Ho 88
This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.
Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.
Farewell, Uncle Ho
by Dennis Milholland
questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu
Chapter 88 (Friday, July 14, 1967)
"Ah, the ones, who got lucky." Monsieur Prétini chuckled knowingly as we entered his office at the Majestic Hotel, following our siesta.
"Who told you?" I wanted to know, so I could possibly put an end to all this gossip. Soon, the authorities would know and want some taxes.
"No one has told me anything," He rose to kiss the back of Yvette's hand, and looked at me curiously. "with the exception of Madame, the rest of you wreak of sex." He chuckled dryly, "That's what I'd meant with lucky." He sat back down on his creaky, wooden office chair and clicked his way across the tiled floor back to his desk. "Have you brought the money?"
I confirmed that we had, and he raised his eyebrows questioningly. "We're all in on this, equally."
Monsieur Prétini started to fill out a form and said, as an aside, something in Vietnamese to Linh, which made him, Jules, and Yvette laugh. Gerry and I looked at them for help with quenching our curiosity. Yvette laughed again and told us that Monsieur Prétini wanted Linh to help him find friends like us.
***
During the wheeling and dealing, both Gerry and Jules had their pads and pencils out, calculating along with Monsieur Prétini. "Do you want your gold in troy-ounce or metric bars?"
"I'd prefer metric." Gerry shrugged and got a chuckle from me, since he'd grown up with the imperial system of measurements, just like I had. "It's easier to think in." Yvette translated for Linh, and everyone was nodding in agreement.
"Okay, metric." I told Monsieur Prétini.
Jules asked Gerry how many grams there were in one troy ounce. Again, he shrugged. Without turning around, Monsieur Prétini checked his chart, and informed them that it was 31.103 grams. They returned to their calculations.
Gerry was the first to let out a whistle, mainly because Jules didn't show surprise with a whistle; he just raised his eyebrows. Gerry also shook his head and compared notes with Jules. The rest of us were looking at them with varying degrees of anticipation. It looked as if Linh were about to faint, and I just wanted them to tell us what they'd come up with. Jules motioned to Gerry to go ahead and tell us. "It'll be well over 25 kilos of pure gold." He paused for effect. "Each."
Monsieur Prétini nodded. "25,340.62 grams to be precise."
Linh still looked as if he might pass out, and I believe all of us were lightheaded to an extent. We had all seen and handled the $500 bills. It was impressive, but not nearly as impressive as 25 kilos of pure gold. Twenty-five kilograms was the total amount of baggage allowed per passenger on an international flight. Twenty-five kilograms was what a huge sack of potatoes weighed. Nobody present had the slightest problem picking up the 300 slips of paper, which went to make up $150,000, but probably nobody in the room would be able to lift even the almost 127 kilograms, possibly more than the combined weight of Gerry and Linh, which comprised that amount of money, which we were to receive in gold.
After we signed the paperwork and were about to leave, Monsieur Prétini cheek-kissed all of us, first on the left then on the right, then mentioned something, which he had forgotten earlier. "Joyeux 14 juillet."
He was right. we'd all totally forgotten that it was Bastille Day, a day to be celebrated for more than one reason. Once outside, and to very nasty glares from some Vietnamese along Tu-Do Street, Linh was humming la Marseillaise, the French national anthem.
***
At the realization that it actually was a holiday, at least in France, the conversation went to where we should celebrate the 178th anniversary of storming the Bastille. And since revolution used to be celebrated in Vietnam before the Americans arrived, we quickly agreed to Yvette's suggestion to search out the up-market Givral, since the round-cornered café, Brodard, in front of which we were having this discussion was completely full.
"And," Linh looked at me to translate. "we can spy on the spies." He kept his giggle at a somewhat sinister tone.
Gerry pulled Linh into a lopsided, one-arm hug. "What kinda spies?" He smelled the top of Linh's hair and slowly released him.
Linh answered in his unique English. "Ever-y-ting: American, Russian, North-Vietnamese. You desire it; you get it."
"Sounds crowded." Gerry laughed; I translated, and Linh jumped onto Gerry, piggyback. Yvette tickled Linh, to get him off Gerry.
Having just passed the monument to the marines, we got caught by the traffic light on the northwest corner of Lê Loi just across from Givral's corner entrance. Jules leaned in close to my ear. "There are two white mice and two MPs following us."
"White mice?" I snickered, looking back.
"Saigonese police." He didn't sound happy. And before the light changed, they were upon us.
"Let's see some ID." The first military policeman demanded, not really looking at any of us, just looking around impatiently, as if he were bored, having to deal with shits like us. The neo-colonialist attitude of this prick put me into my bullheaded bite-my-ass mode.
I told Linh, Jules, and Yvette in Cantonese to play dumb and not to react. Linh seemed terrified. I gave Gerry a click of my tongue and a frown, hopefully conveying the message, not to co-operate. I had his passport anyway. The two MPs looked at their Vietnamese colleagues for a translation. They both shrugged.
The face of the first MP was turning red. Then he aggressively focused on our white guy. "I know you fuckin' understand me. I can smell your Right Guard deodorant, so cut the shit."
Gerry went into a very long, very loud and very belligerent tirade in German and placed his arm protectively around Linh, to calm him.
I smiled, as if I were trying my best to co-operate with his white majesty. And just to make it look good, I bowed slightly and told him in Cantonese that none of us understood. There was a pause, and now, we had a pointless standoff, which was going silent.
While I was grinning subserviently at the two MPs, and Gerry was glaring at them with the most evil scowl, I'd ever seen him even try, I noticed that the more standoffish of the Vietnamese policemen was giving me the hand sign of 致 公 堂, which I'd seen my uncle Fred use many times. I slowly returned the sign. He blinked three times, and he and his colleague silently walked off. They had vanished before the MPs knew that they were standing alone with us under a threatening dark-grey sky.
"Shit." They started looking around frantically. Obviously, they'd also heard stories of Americans' disappearing off the streets. "Where the Fuck are they?" The two hormone-inflated machos seemed to approach panic, reminding me of how ganders would honk and flap their wings as the first reaction to surprise.
And this was, in fact, the first time I'd realized that some Americans can't focus on two things at once. In New York, these guys would have been, within seconds, victims of scam scalpers selling outdated twofers to tourists on Times Square, and in a war zone, it could prove to be fatal. Their focus was now on catching up with the missing Vietnamese cops, and they'd left us standing there with a green light. And the first large drops told us that the afternoon rain was going to settle the dust for us, both figuratively and literally.
When we walked through the front door of the nicely air-conditioned, posh, walnut-paneled café, which called itself a tearoom and served European pastry accompanied by Mantovani at discrete volume, our protector, Mr. Chung, was waving animatedly from the large table on the left, beside the window, looking out onto Lê Loi. "That was brilliant, absolutely brilliant." He was speaking English probably in deference to Gerry, whom he greeted with a smile and a pat on the shoulder.
"Yeah," Gerry smiled. "I had a hard time to keep from laughing."
Everyone found a seat, and the waiter came to see what we would like. It was that time of day when coffee or tea seemed just right.
Reading the list of current cakes, Yvette suddenly got a naughty look. "Oh là là, they have gâteau Forêt Noire." Everyone, except for Gerry and me, seemed to swoon."
Gerry looked perplexed at Yvette and then at me. "I don't know how you would translate that. Um… literally it's Black Forest… um-"
Gerry's face lit up and his excitement grew, along with the others. "-schwarzwälder Kirschtorte."
Good that he now knew what it was, I was still in the dark. Nobody wanted to explain it to me, but they were urging me to try it. So, it was unanimous, six coffees and six slices of gâteau Forêt Noire."
***
Gâteau Forêt Noire turned out to be a layered chocolate cake with chopped cherries and cherry spirits in mascarpone as the filling between the chocolate layers. Yes, it was delicious and would replace quite a bit of supper. Linh couldn't finish his and gave Gerry his last third. Yvette held her own, though. And I wondered what activities she pursued to keep her very slender figure.
While we were having coffee and cake, I noticed a tall, blond-haired man eyeing us from a small table on the other side of the waist-high room divider, sitting near the bar and the cash register. He had a scar across his left eye and cheek; he kind of reminded me of a white version of Top at the Reception Center at Dix. Like Top, he was handsome, but also nicely tanned and was wearing an expensive tropical-weight linen suit.
Linh noticed that I was looking, nudged me and whispered in Cantonese. "Spy."
Mr. Chung overheard him, clicked his tongue once and declared softly without looking: "German diplomat."
Linh giggled. "And the difference?"
Mr. Chung winked, "A more sophisticated worldview." Again, glancing briefly in our direction, the blond man with the scar signalled to the waiter that he wished to pay.
***
Of course, we'd stayed put at Givral, until the rain stopped, which it did, punctually at six. Yvette and Linh had been excited about catching the early evening showing, virtually next door at the Eden Cinema, of 蘇絲黃的世界 also known to us, especially to Gerry, as The World of Suzie Wong. Jules wasn't up to romantic comedy, this evening. Gerry and I decided not to go see the movie again, since both of us had seen it several times in the States. We also had some letter-writing to catch up on. After all, we still had to tell Gordon and Ju-Long where we were and that we were getting settled and had met Jules. I also wanted to thank Earl and June for setting up the connection to Yvette. And Mr. Chung wanted to have a word with us in private.
Outside, the humidity had increased a little, but the rain had, as it had every day since our arrival, once again, cleansed the air in central Saigon of the omnipresent, diesel and two-stroke, motor-vehicle exhaust, which was usually accompanied by other, less aggressive fumes, such as burning charcoal, roasting meat, clouds of dark-tobacco smoke, accentuated with whiffs of incense, heavy floral perfumes and stale urine, all now giving way to the sweet fragrance of tamarinds and fir trees.
Jules opined that the rain functioned similarly to a Turkish water pipe: the exhaust fumes became bound to water particles. But as opposed to a Turkish water pipe, the rain flushed its refuse into the reddish-brown Saigon river, along with basically everything else. It was sort of like Saigon's answer to the East River back in New York.
Crossing over at the traffic light on the corner of Tu-Do, Jules weakly tried to take his leave, which was politely quashed by Mr. Chung and his fresh bottle of Dubonnet. Gerry was digging in his pocket for the house keys, as Mr. Chung gestured over to the Rex Hotel, where groups of mainly men in varying degrees of dress, ranging from extremely casual civilian, to semi-formal dress uniform. talking, shaking hands, getting into taxis or staff cars. Mr. Chung smiled knowingly. "The five o'clock follies."
Gerry chuckled and held the door to the stairwell. "You'll have to explain that."
"It's what the international journalists call the five o'clock press briefing by the US Army." Mr. Chung put his hand on Gerry's shoulder. "Since everyone knows that it is pure propaganda, most of them go along for the free booze on the roof garden of the American Field-Grade Officer's Quarters."
"Don't they get wet during the afternoon rain?" Gerry snorted at the idea.
"Let's assume that they have some sort of canopies." Mr. Chung squeezed Gerry's shoulder. "But I don't know; they've never invited me up." His deep chuckle bordered on the self-indulgent.
***
Mr. Chung and his bottle of Dubonnet followed me into the kitchen to mix the drinks. His baritone was soothing, his touch to my back was electric. "Mr. Linh seems to run a thoroughly organized kitchen."
I nodded, breaking the seal on the yet unused bottle. "And all of the knives are his." I nodded to the magnetic bar, now mounted above the sink. "He told us not to touch them, since they're extremely sharp."
Opening the refrigerator door, I spotted half a lime and wondered if I weren't going to destroy some exotic concoction, which Linh had planned, but relaxed when I saw two more whole limes. "He is very organized."
"Would you and Gerry take him with you, when you leave?" Chung was trying to sound non-committal, but I heard what sounded like hope in the undertone.
Gordon had told me about racism in Vietnam with regard to mixed-race children. "Do you think that it would be a good idea?" I counted out seven parts Dubonnet into each glass, which now contained ice cubes, twists of lime and three parts gin.
"Linh is loyal to a fault." Chung picked up two of the drinks, after I'd stirred them, and we moved into the living room. "I dare say that he would never divulge secrets, even under torture."
Gerry looked concerned, as he took the glass from Mr. Chung, who then sat down next to him. "Has he been tortured?"
Chung nodded. "The CIA nabbed him, after the French had abruptly closed their embassy in '64. They wanted information, and apparently cranking a field telephone with the wires connected to testicles proves extremely effective." He raised his glass. "Except with our Linh, that is." He took an approving sip. "Our inside sources verified that they got absolutely nothing from him."