“Which cell phone? There were two,” I ask. Bride seems not to understand the question. He shrugs. “So who planted the bomb? Why?”
“To be frank, I’m not sure. It is certain that Goldman saw a security threat to his program just when it was gaining commercial traction. On that theory the bomb was intended to send them scuttling back-remember how fragile are their mental states. They weren’t supposed to be in the hut when it went off.”
“But there’s another theory?”
“Well, as we both know, there’s another player, isn’t there?”
“The Asset ordered the bombing?”
Bride doesn’t answer.
“None of this explains why I’m here, now, today. Why would you spill the beans on a whole secret operation like this, just because one old derelict thinks he’s my father?”
Once again, the Doctor seems disinclined to answer. He stares out of the window with that gargoyle expression on his face, as if he hasn’t heard.
The long slow journey through the tunnel is over, and the truck emerges first onto bumpy cleared land, then finally onto a paved road where a people mover is waiting. The Doc explains that since we are not only nearer to Vietnam than to Phnom Penh, but, as a matter of fact, nearer to Saigon than Phnom Penh, it is easier to drive across the border than take a plane from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh.
The border guards let us through even though I have no visa: the Doc speaks fluent Vietnamese and bribes them as a matter of course. I guess he must use the crossing a lot. Once we are in Vietnam the road is pretty clear. I am silent all the way.
25
The colors of Vietnam are gold and green. Mix them together and you have the muddy waters of the Mekong Delta. Keep them separate and you have the baize green of the paddy and the bright yellow dust of the elevated causeways between the fields. The French, with their legendary good taste, used those colors lavishly in their sumptuous villas, with the occasional dense blue to set them off. Oh, yes, somehow Vietnam manages to be more stunning than Thailand; she is like a beautiful sister, who was always going to be the most savagely raped. Of all the invaders, though, Big Money has perpetrated the greatest violations of a rural culture. You don’t see so much paddy or old colonial villas these days as you near the outskirts of HCMC. Capitalism has emptied Hanoi and sent everyone down to Saigon where the work is. The endless overhead cables, building sites, cement batching plants, construction cranes, and the raggedness of an entire country dug up and cemented over to make it fit to compete in the twenty-first century have quite extinguished arcadian innocence. During the journey the Doc used his cell phone to book us rooms at the Continentaclass="underline" “Where Fowler liked to have breakfast-you remember, in The Quiet American?”
Now I am thinking: The Quiet American. The name of the book awakens something in me as if I have been bitten by a snake. It was that book I ransacked more than any other in my search for him. That haunting portrayal of a country at the mercy of alien idiots was, for me, all about him. That tale of a middle-aged man who falls for a bar girl (who looked in the movie just like Nong in her youth) was where I sought him more than in any other book, simply because it was better written than the others.
There are fewer trishaws these days, but still plenty of old women in black trousers, the Chinese quarter is still called Cholon, and nobody refers to the city as Ho Chi Minh. Of course, the Continental is still there, set back a few hundred yards from the river and just behind the Opera House, still surviving and thriving, quite as if there never had been a communist victory. I order a pastis at the bar and sit outside. When the waiter arrives with the clear liquid in a glass along with a small jug of iced water, I watch with pleasure while I pour the water into the pastis and it turns cloudy, and I invoke the first words of that book: After dinner I sat and waited for Pyle in my room over the rue Catinat. A few more sips, and I’m feeling as if I’ve been in Saigon forever.
I have time to kill because the Doc said he needs to “recharge his batteries” after the road trip. The clerk at reception shows me on a map the shortest route from the Continental to the War Remnants Museum: left at Ly Tu Trong, across the barbecue park, then up one block to Vo Van Tan; a thirty-minute stroll, maximum, the clerk says.
In this city people like to sit outdoors on ledges, or squat, or sit on low plastic stools in the shade of a building or Bodhi tree, and take over that spot for whole days at a time. Young women chat together, men drink beer and play a form of checkers with crown bottle tops; when hungry they send for takeaway that they consume in the space they have adopted as their daytime home. On most side streets there is at least one barber with his mirror hung from a tree or railing, a chair with a customer all soaped up and ready for the cut-throat. The barbecue park is a good-size place where both trees and people wobble in the heat and you wonder if they’re real or not. It took me an hour to reach the museum, which is unmistakable with its forecourt littered with small fighter planes, massive ordnance, khaki tanks, and bomb casings as tall as me. With so much firepower, how did they lose?
I buy my ticket at the kiosk. When I enter the museum, though, something happens to my ears. I know that there are other tourists here, indeed there is a group of about twelve Vietnamese schoolchildren in blue uniforms who are assiduously noting the names and numbers of weapons on display, which were used against their country in the war. There is an elderly American couple, the wife supporting her tearful husband, who after only five minutes loses control and has to leave. Three French men in their forties stand stunned and uncomprehending before the guillotine that their country used before others took over the task of torture: perhaps they had expected to see evidence of American bad behavior only? But I cannot hear anything. It is as if I am viewing the place from a different dimension, where the other visitors are merely shadows.
I do not examine the exhibits except to confirm they are the same as in that replica museum in the Cambodian jungle, then leave and cross the park again. It has been over four hours since the Doc and I checked into the hotel and I’ve not heard a word from him. He still has not told me what wormholes are. When I use my cell phone to call his room, the operator tells me he has blocked all incoming calls and left strict instructions not to be disturbed.
I have a theory as to what “recharging his batteries” might signify. The main clue was a change in the Doctor’s mood on the final leg of the journey from Cambodia. He became impatient with the traffic, as if there were an urgent matter in the city awaiting his attention. Now I have no more doubts: it wasn’t Camel cigarettes alone that kept his head together all those years in the jungle.
When I arrive back at the Continental I talk to the clerk, who calls the manager. I explain that my elderly companion, while exceptionally fit for his age, does have one or two health problems that need constant checking. While I’m talking I’m peeling off a great wad of dong that I changed on my way back from the museum, which doesn’t amount to much in dollars but quickly impresses the manager. When the bribe has reached a sufficient level, he holds up a hand, smiles, and selects a key from the rack. I do not ask why the manager would need a key to open a door of a room that is legally occupied. The manager slides the key gently into the lock, opens the door sufficiently to peep inside, nods at me to enter, then closes and locks the door behind me.
The reason for extreme caution lies in the Doctor’s hands: a pipe about a yard long with a bowl sinuously emerging about a third of the way up the stem. The room reeks with the sweet smell of opium. Despite the clues, I am surprised. Why would this master chemist use an old, addictive, and toxic drug when he could have used LSD?