Christ, I need another drink even to talk about this. Thank you, General. He rubbed his eyes. All I can say is, it was personal. After I left you at the airport, I went back to my villa to get some sleep. I’d told Kim to meet me at dawn. She was going to get her family. Six comes along, six fifteen, six thirty, seven. The chief calls me up and wants to know where I am. I put him off. Seven fifteen, seven thirty, eight. The chief calls me back and says, Get your ass down to the embassy now, every man on deck. The hell with the chief, that Hungarian bastard. I grab my guns and drive across town to find Kim. Forget the daytime curfew, everyone was out and running around, trying to find a way out. The suburbs were quieter, though. Life was normal. I even saw Kim’s neighbors breaking out the commie flag. The previous week those same people were flying your flag. I asked them where she was. They said they didn’t know where the Yankee whore was. I wanted to shoot them then and there, but everybody on the street had turned out to look at me. I sure couldn’t wait for the local Viet Cong to come kidnap me. I drove back to the villa. Ten o’clock. She wasn’t there. I couldn’t wait any longer. I sat in the car and I cried. I haven’t cried over a girl in thirty years, but hell, there you have it. Then I drove to the embassy and saw there was no way in. Like I said, thousands of people. I left the keys in the ignition just like you did, General, and I hope some communist son of a bitch is enjoying himself with my Bel Air. Then I fought my way through the crowd. Those Vietnamese who wouldn’t let their own fellow Vietnamese through, they made way for me. Sure, I pushed and shoved and screamed, and plenty of them pushed and shoved and screamed right back, but I got closer, even though the closer I got, the tougher it was. I had made eye contact with the marines on the wall, and I knew if I could just get close enough I’d be saved. I was sweating like a pig, my shirt was torn, and all those bodies were packed against me. The people in front of me couldn’t see I was an American and no one was turning around just because I was tapping them on the shoulder, so I yanked them by the hair, or pulled them by the ear, or grabbed them by the shirt collar to haul them out of my way. I’ve never done anything like that in my life. I was too proud to scream at first, but it didn’t take long before I was screaming, too. Let me through, I’m an American, goddammit. I finally got myself to that wall, and when those marines reached down and grabbed my hand and pulled me up, I damn near cried again. Claude finished the last of his drink and banged the glass on the desk. I was never so ashamed in my life, but I was also never so goddamn glad to be an American, either.
We sat in silence while the General poured us each another double.
Here’s to you, Claude, I said, raising my glass to him. Congratulations.
For what? he said, raising his own.
Now you know what it feels like to be one of us.
His laugh was short and bitter.
I was thinking the exact same thing.
The cue for the evacuation’s final phase was “White Christmas,” played on American Radio Service, but even this did not go according to plan. First, since the song was top secret information, meant only for the Americans and their allies, everyone in the city also knew what to listen for. Then what do you think happens? Claude said. The deejay can’t find the song. The Bing Crosby one. He’s tossing his booth looking for that tape, and of course it’s not there. Then what? said the General. He finds a version by Tennessee Ernie Ford and plays that. Who’s he? I said. How do I know? At least the melody and lyrics were the same. So, I said, situation normal. Claude nodded. All fucked up. Let’s just hope history forgets the snafus.
This was the prayer many a general and politician said before they went to bed, but some snafus were more justifiable than others. Take the operation’s name, Frequent Wind, a snafu foreshadowing a snafu. I had brooded on it for a year, wondering if I could sue the US government for malpractice, or at least a criminal failure of the literary imagination. Who was the military mastermind who squeezed out Frequent Wind from between his tightly clenched buttocks? Didn’t it occur to anyone that Frequent Wind might bring to mind the Divine Wind that inspired the kamikaze, or, more likely for the ahistorical, juvenile set, the phenomenon of passing gas, which, as is well known, can lead to a chain reaction, hence the frequency? Or was I not giving the military mastermind enough credit for being a deadpan ironist, he having also possibly chosen “White Christmas” as a poke in the eye to all my countrymen who neither celebrated Christmas nor had ever seen a white one? Could not this unknown ironist foresee that all the bad air whipped up by American helicopters was the equivalent of a massive blast of gas in the faces of those left behind? Weighing stupidity and irony, I picked the latter, irony lending the Americans a last shred of dignity. It was the only thing salvageable from the tragedy that had befallen us, or that we had brought on ourselves, depending on one’s point of view. The problem with this tragedy is that it had not ended neatly, unlike a comedy. It still preoccupied us, the General most of all, who now turned to business.
I am glad you are here, Claude. Your timing could not be more perfect.
Claude shrugged. Timing’s one thing I’ve always been good at, General.
We have a problem, as you warned me before we left.
Which problem? There was more than one, as I recall.
We have an informer. A spy.
Both looked at me, as if for confirmation. I kept my face impassive even as my stomach began to rotate counterclockwise. When the General named a name, it was the crapulent major’s. My stomach began to rotate in the opposite direction. I don’t know that guy, Claude said.
He is not a man to be known. He is not a remarkable officer. It is our young friend here who chose to bring the major with us.
If you remember, sir, the major—
It hardly matters. What matters is that I was tired and I made a mistake by giving you that job. I do not blame you. I blame myself. Now it is time to correct a mistake.
Why do you think it’s this guy?
Number one, he is Chinese. Number two, my contacts in Saigon say his family is doing very, very well. Number three, he is fat. I do not like fat men.
Just because he’s Chinese doesn’t mean he’s a spy, General.
I am not a racist, Claude. I treat all my men the same, no matter their origins, like our young friend here. But this major, the fact that his family is doing well in Saigon is suspicious. Why are they doing well? Who allows them to prosper? The communists know all our officers and their families. No officer’s family is doing well at home. Why his?
Circumstantial evidence, General.
That never stopped you before, Claude.
Things are different here. You have to play by new rules.