‘I’ll drop you off at the CIB.’
‘Thanks.’
Even though we made our fond farewells — Frank asking for news of the girls, how I was coping out here, kissing me goodbye — I knew I had made a mistake. I should have kept my mouth shut.
I was upstairs at my desk in the SPS bureau trying to draft a resignation letter to Lane Burrell. Seeing John’s paltry collection of possessions had depressed me — a whole young existence subsumed by some dirty laundry, damp-swollen paperbacks and a couple of cameras. It had been no life for John and it was no life for me — and it was time I brought it to a dignified end.
Renata rapped on the door frame. She looked a little alarmed.
‘You’d better come down, Amory.’
I followed her to the reception area to find a US master sergeant with an MP brassard on his arm and two smart ARVN military police acting as escort.
‘Amory Clay?’
‘Yes. What’s this all about?’
He glanced at the sheet of paper in his hand.
‘Your visa has been rescinded. You are illegally in this country. You are under arrest.’
I am writing this down, sitting on my suitcase, somewhere in Tan Son Nhut airport. This hut has a mud floor and no furniture. The door is locked and an ARVN MP is standing outside it. I’m being deported and I know exactly why — because of what I saw the day before yesterday at Nui Dat. Unwittingly, I now share a secret — but a secret no one wants me to share, hence this unseemly rush to have me out of the country.
The master sergeant who took me into custody told me the bare minimum as he allowed me to return to my apartment and pack up my belongings — following orders, highest authority. I sit here feeling frightened and glad. Glad to be leaving — that was planned — but frightened by this exhibition of absolute power. My visa had six more months to run — I had renewed it on my return from Hong Kong. My accreditation was solid. I was being rushed out of this country as if I had the plague. On whose orders? Frank’s? I doubted it. No, Frank would have told someone important about our meeting at Nui Dat; then that information would have gone up the chain of command until a decision was made. Get her out. I’m waiting for a Pan Am charter to Hong Kong where I’m to stay in transit until I’m put on a BOAC flight to London. I am not being charged for any airfares.
FINAL THOUGHTS ON LEAVING VIETNAM
John Oberkamp had more scars on his body than Sholto. Maybe that was what attracted me to him — he reminded me of Sholto in some way. Not physically, but some quality of alertness, of curiosity. Just the loose-limbed, supple way he carried himself. There is still no news. No reports of his capture.1
Truong returned just as I was leaving the apartment with my MP escort. He foolishly tried to grab hold of me and bundle me into his Renault. ‘No, Truong, no!’ I shouted. ‘I’m all right. Don’t worry. I’m going home.’ He began to sob, his hands over his face.
The name of the master sergeant who escorted me out of the country was Sam M. Goodforth. He was burly, unsmiling, florid — as if he’d just stepped from a hot bath — with a close crew cut. I remember his name because it was printed on a plastic rectangle over his left breast pocket. Goodforth — go forth.
After John Oberkamp had motored off up the road to Vinh Hoa, one of the APC crew replaced John’s makeshift bandage with a proper field dressing. ‘You ought to get that properly cleaned up,’ he said. ‘I heard Charlie puts shit on their bullets.’ The lieutenant called in a medevac helicopter for me — as a favour — and it was to be my last trip in a Huey helicopter in Vietnam. I was designated as a ‘lightly wounded casualty (civilian)’. I was choppered back to base hospital in Saigon. That’s how I feel now, on leaving — a lightly wounded casualty (civilian).
And as I sit here, worried, uncomfortable, a bit miserable, a bit angry at this summary, enforced departure, I ask myself if I’d done the right thing in embarking on this Vietnam adventure, leaving my home and my family behind to go on some half-thought-out mission to prove something to myself, to discover something of myself. What did I learn that I didn’t already know? Quite a lot, actually. And I took some good photographs and made a book of them. And made some money. And I met and loved another man. . I don’t think I can blame myself for wanting to do what I did — and I don’t think Annie and Blythe blame me, either. It is my life, after all, and I have every right to live it to the full. Oh yes, you keep saying that to yourself, don’t you?
I can hear voices outside the door — American voices. Is it time to leave? Am I finally going home?
*
And that was the end of my Vietnam Scrapbook, but not entirely the end of my Vietnam experience — it travelled with me a few thousand miles. I arrived at Heathrow on the Hong Kong flight early in the morning. As I crossed the tarmac apron towards the airport building two police officers intercepted me and led me to an unmarked car parked nearby. I reminded them that I had a suitcase on board; I was told it would be brought to me.
I was driven through early-morning London, the streets still pretty much empty, to St John’s Wood, north of Regent’s Park, to a block of mansion flats with its own underground car park. I was taken to a service apartment on the fourth floor where I was greeted by a sour-faced, heavily built young woman in a puce suit and sensible shoes. She showed me into a sitting room with brown upholstered furniture and a gas fire and offered me a cup of tea and biscuits. If I wanted to use the toilet, she said, I should ring this bell, pointing at a bell-push by the door. And then she locked me in.
I drank my tea and ate my digestive biscuits and an hour after I had arrived my suitcase was delivered. I waited. At lunchtime I was provided with a round of ham sandwiches and a glass of orange juice. I dozed on the sofa for most of the afternoon. I deliberately didn’t ask my guardian what was going on. Supper was a round of cheese and tomato sandwiches and a glass of orange juice. I stretched out on the sofa again and slept for a troubled few hours.
Very late in the night I was woken by puce-suit and led down a corridor to another room with a dining table and six chairs. Another cup of tea was served. After ten minutes or so I heard voices at the flat’s front door and moments later two young, suited men came in and introduced themselves as they took their seats opposite me: Mr Brown and Mr Green. They were in their thirties; one was dark and solid (Mr Green), the other languid and corpulent with fair, thinning hair (Mr Brown). Both of them were, no doubt, educated at expensive private schools and were graduates of excellent universities. They had polite middle-class accents. They could have happily read the news on the BBC.
MR BROWN: Lady Farr. Your professional name is Amory Clay.
ME: That’s correct.
MR GREEN: We won’t detain you much longer. Our apologies for your wait.
ME: I’m keen to return home. May I ask why I was detained in the first place? I’m not aware of having done anything wrong.
MR BROWN: We had to detain you because of what you thought you saw at [consults notebook] Nui Dat airbase, Vietnam.
ME: I really can hardly remember anything at all.
MR GREEN: We will assume, for your own sake, that you will remember nothing at all.
ME: Of course. I promise.
MR GREEN: Nothing. Ever. For your own sake.
ME: I repeat — I promise.
MR BROWN: Because if you so much as breathe a word. .
ME: I promise. Nothing.