Democracy: A Novel Part 14

"Listen," Inez said. "It's too late for the correct thing. Forget the correct thing."

Which is how Jack Lovett and Inez Victor happened that Easter Sunday night in 1975 to take the Singapore Airlines flight that leaves Honolulu at 3:45 A.M. and at 9:40 A.M. one day later lands at Kai Tak, Hong Kong.

Recently when I took this flight I thought of Inez, who described it as an eleven-hour dawn.

Inez said she never closed her eyes.

Inez said she could still feel the cold of the window against her cheek.

Inez said the 3:45 A.M. flight from Honolulu to Hong Kong was exactly the way she hoped dying would be.

Dawn all the way.

Something to see, as Jack Lovett had said at the Happy Talk about another dawn in another year. Something to behold.

It occurs to me that Inez Victor's behavior the night she flew to Hong Kong may not have been so circ.u.mstantial after all.

She had to have a pa.s.sport with her, didn't she?

What does that suggest?

You tell me.

Three.

1.

THE day Jack Lovett flew down to Saigon the rain began in Hong Kong. The rain muddied the streets, stiffened the one pair of shoes Inez had with her, broke the blossoms from the bauhinia tree on the balcony of the apartment in which Jack Lovett had told her to wait and obscured the view of the Happy Valley track from the bedroom window. The rain reminded her of Honolulu. The rain and the obscured horizon and the breaking of the blossoms and the persistent smell of mildew in the small apartment all reminded her of Honolulu but it was colder in Hong Kong. She was always cold. Every morning after Jack Lovett left Inez would wake early in the slight chill and put on the galoshes and macintosh she had found in the otherwise empty closet and set out to walk. She developed a route. She would walk down Queen's Road and over behind the Anglican cathedral and up Garden Road to the American consulate, where she would sit in the reception room and read newspapers.

Quite often in the reception room of the American consulate on Garden Road Inez read about Harry Victor's relatives. In the South China Morning Post she read that Harry Victor's wife had not been present at the funeral of Harry Victor's sister-in-law, a private service in Honolulu after which Senator Victor declined to speak to reporters. In the Asian edition of the International Herald-Tribune she read that Harry Victor's father-in-law had required treatment at the Honolulu City and County Jail for superficial wounds inflicted during an apparent suicide attempt with a Bic razor. In the international editions of both Time and Newsweek she read that Harry Victor's daughter was ironically or mysteriously missing in Vietnam.

"Ironically" was the word used by Time, and "mysteriously" by Newsweek. Both Time and Newsweek used "missing," as did the South China Morning Post, the Asian editions of both the Wall Street Journal and the International Herald-Tribune, the Straits Times, and the pouched copies of the New York Times and the Washington Post that arrived at the consulate three days after publication. "Missing" did not seem to Inez to quite cover it. The pilots of downed fighters were said to be "missing," and correspondents last seen in ambush situations. "Missing" suggested some line of duty that did not quite encompa.s.s getting on a C-5A transport in Seattle and flying to Saigon to look for a job. Possibly that was the ironic part, or even the mysterious.

By the time Inez finished reading the papers it would be close to noon, and she would walk from the consulate on up Garden Road to what seemed to be a Chinese nursery school, with a terrace roofed in corrugated plastic under which the children played. She would stand in the rain and watch the children until, at the ping of a little bell, they formed a line and marched inside, and then she would take a taxi back to the apartment and hang the macintosh on the shower door to dry and set the galoshes behind the door. She had no idea to whom the galoshes and macintosh belonged. She had no idea to whom the apartment belonged.

"Somebody in Vientiane," Jack Lovett had said when she asked.

She presumed it was a woman because the galoshes and macintosh were small. She presumed the woman was an American because the only object in the medicine cabinet, a plastic bottle of aspirin tablets, was the house brand of a drugstore she knew to be in New York. She presumed that the American woman was a reporter because there was a standard Smith-Corona typewriter and a copy of Modern English Usage on the kitchen table, and a paperback copy of Homage to Catalonia in the drawer of the bed table. In Inez's experience all reporters had paperback copies of Homage to Catalonia, and kept them in the same place where they kept the matches and the candle and the notebook, for when the hotel was bombed. When she asked Jack Lovett if the person in Vientiane to whom the apartment belonged was in fact an American woman reporter he had shrugged.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "It's fine."

After that when Inez read the newspapers in the reception room of the American consulate she made a point of noticing the byline on any story originating in Vientiane, looking for a woman's name, but never found one.

The telephone in this apartment never rang. Jack Lovett got his messages in Hong Kong at a small hotel off Connaught Road, and it was this number that Inez had given Adlai when she reached him in Honolulu the day she arrived. Because Harry had hung up mid-sentence when she called him from Wahiawa to say she was going to Hong Kong she made this call person-to-person to Adlai, but Harry had come on the line first.

"I happen to know you're in Hong Kong," Harry had said.

"Of course you happen to know I'm in Hong Kong," Inez had said. "I told you I was going."

"Will you speak to this party," the operator had kept saying. "Is this your party?"

"You hung up," Inez had said.

"No," Harry had said. "This is not her party."

"This doesn't have anything to do with you," Inez had said when Adlai finally picked up. "I just wanted to make sure you knew that."

"Dad told me." Adlai had made this sound slightly prosecutorial. "What does it have to do with?"

"Just not with you."

"What am I supposed to tell Dad?"

Inez had considered this. "Tell him h.e.l.lo," she said finally.

That had been Tuesday in Hong Kong and Monday in Honolulu.

It had been Wednesday the second of April in Hong Kong when Jack Lovett flew down to Saigon to look for Jessie.

Twice during that first week, the week of the rain, he had come back up to Hong Kong unexpectedly, once on an Air America transport with eighty-three third-country nationals who had been identified with American interests and once on a chartered Pan American 707 with the officers and cash reserves of the Saigon branches of the Bank of America, the First National City Bank, and the Chase Manhattan. The first time he came up it had been for only a few hours, which he spent placing calls from the telephone in the apartment, but the second time he had spent the night, and they had driven out to the Repulse Bay and taken a room overlooking the sea. They had ordered dinner in the room and slept and woke and slept again and whenever they were awake Jack Lovett had talked. He had seemed to regard the room at the Repulse Bay as neutral ground on which he could talk as he had not talked in the apartment that belonged to somebody in Vientiane. He talked all night. He talked to Inez but as if to himself. Certain words and phrases kept recurring.

Fixed-wing phase.

Tiger Ops.

Black flights.

Extraction.

a.s.sets.

AID was without a.s.sets.

USIA was without a.s.sets.

By a.s.sets Jack Lovett had seemed to mean aircraft, aircraft and money. The Defense Attache Office had a.s.sets. It was increasingly imperative to develop your own a.s.sets because without private a.s.sets no one could guarantee extraction. No one could guarantee extraction because they were living in a dream world down there. Amateur hour down there. Pencil pushers down there.

Each time Jack Lovett said "down there" he would glance toward the windows that opened on the water, as if "down there" were visible, nine hundred miles of South China Sea telescoped by the pressure of his obsession. Toward dawn he was talking about the lists they were making down there. They had finally decided to make a count of priority evacuees in case extraction was necessary.

In case.

Inez should note "in case."

"In case" was proof the inmates were running the bin.

Because the various agencies had been unable to agree on the count each agency was drawing up its own list. Some people said the lists would add up to a hundred-fifty-thousand priority evacuees, others said ten times that number. n.o.body seemed in any rush to make it definite. They were talking about evacuating twenty years of American contacts, not to mention their own fat American a.s.ses, but they were still talking as if they had another twenty years to do it. Twenty years and the applause of the local population. An inter-agency task force had been appointed. To shake this down. The task force had met for dinner at the residence, met for G.o.dd.a.m.n dinner at the G.o.dd.a.m.n residence, add a little more lard to those a.s.ses, and by the time the cigars were pa.s.sed they did not yet know whether they had a hundred-fifty-thousand priority evacuees or ten times that number but they did know what they needed.

They needed a wall map.

They needed a wall map of what they kept calling Metro Saigon.

This wall map had been requisitioned.

Through General Services.

They were getting their wall map any day now, and what they would do when they got it was this: they would make a population density plot. In other words they would plot, with little colored pins, the locations of a few types of people they might want to invite to the final extraction.

In case.

Strictly in case.

"Types" of people, right.

A little green pin for every holder of an emba.s.sy ration card.

A little yellow pin for every holder of a DAO liquor ration card.

A little red pin for every current member of the Cercle Sportif. Note "current." Behind on the dues, forget it.

The little white pins were the real stroke. Follow this. There was going to be an a.n.a.lysis of all taxi dispatch records for the period between the first of January and the first of April. Then there would be a little white pin placed on the map showing every location in Metro Saigon to which a taxi had been dispatched. Too bad for the guys who drove their own cars. Around Metro Saigon. Taken a cab, they'd be on the map. This map was going to be a genuine work of art. Anybody down there had any feeling for posterity, they'd get this map out and put it under gla.s.s at the State Department.

Pins intact.

Memento mori Metro Saigon.

By the time he stopped talking the room was light.

Inez sat on the edge of the bed and began brushing her hair.

"So what do you think," Jack Lovett said.

"I don't know."

Through the half-closed shutters Inez could see the early light on the water. It occurred to her for the first time that this was the same sea she had looked on with Jessie, the day there had been no baby cobras in the borrowed garden and Harry had been at the situation briefing in Saigon. Now there was about to be no more situation and Jessie was in Saigon and Jack Lovett was going back down to Saigon but Jack Lovett might not find her before it happened.

n.o.body even knew what "it" was.

That was what he was telling her.

She brushed her hair harder. "I don't know how an evacuation is run."

"Not this way."

"She's not on anybody's list, is she." Inez found that she could not say Jessie's name. "She's not on the map."

Jack Lovett got up and opened the shutters wide. For a while the rain had stopped but now it was falling hard again, falling through the patchy sunlight, glistening on the palms outside the window and flooding the broken fountain in front of the hotel.

"Not unless she happened to join the Cercle Sportif," Jack Lovett said. "No." He closed the shutters again and turned back toward Inez. "Put down the hairbrush and look at me," he said. "Do you think I'd leave her there?"

"You might not find her."

"I always found you," Jack Lovett said. "I guess I can find your daughter."

2.

IN fact Jack Lovett did find Inez Victor's daughter.

In fact Jack Lovett found Inez Victor's daughter that very day, found her by what he called dumb luck, just got on the regular Air Vietnam flight from Hong Kong to Saigon and landed at Tan Son Nhut and half an hour later he was looking at Jessie Victor.

Jack Lovett called this dumb luck but you or I might not have had the same dumb luck.

You or I for example might not have struck up the connection with the helicopter maintenance instructor who happened to be one of the other two pa.s.sengers on the Air Vietnam 707 to Saigon that day.

Jack Lovett did.

Jack Lovett struck up a connection with this helicopter maintenance instructor the same way he had struck up connections with all those emba.s.sy drivers and oil riggers and airline stewardesses and a.s.sistant professors of English literature traveling on Fulbright fellowships and tropical agronomists traveling under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation and desk clerks and ticket agents and salesmen of rice converters and coco dryers and Dutch pesticides and German pharmaceuticals.

By reflex.

The helicopter maintenance instructor who happened to be one of the two other pa.s.sengers on the Air Vietnam 707 that day had last been in Saigon in 1973, when his contract was terminated. He had been in Los Angeles working for Hughes but now he was coming back to look for the wife and little girl he had left in 1973. The wife had been with her family in Pleiku and he had gotten a call from her saying that the little girl had been blinded on a C-130 during the evacuation south when a leaking hydraulic line overhead sprayed liquid into her face. The wife said Saigon was still safe but he thought it was time to come find her. He had the address she had given him but according to a buddy he had contacted this address did not check out. The helicopter maintenance instructor had seemed cheerful at the beginning of the flight but after two Seagram Sevens his mood had darkened.

What had she done to get on the C-130 in the first place?

Didn't everybody else walk out of Pleiku?

What about the f.u.c.king address?

Jack Lovett had offered him a ride into Saigon and the helicopter maintenance instructor had wanted to make one stop, to check the address with a bartender he used to know at the Legion club.