Page 72 of Cry Havoc
He paralleled the sewage ditch that deposited its dark sludge into a small pond on the other side of the building. Eldridge knew the pond would soon fill the night with the sounds of frogs croaking to attract mates. Eldridge always found it amusing that he would soon be making love to the sound of frogs mating in a pond of shit just off the balcony.Fucking Saigon.
Three doorbells were affixed to the wall beside the entrance. He rang the middle buzzer twice, followed by four more in quick succession. He paused and then pressed it twice more.
A minute later he heard the shuffling of slipper-clad feet.
Lan Tri Phuong opened the door in nothing but a blue silk robe. Stunning and perfectly proportioned, she couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty. Eldridge quickly stepped inside, enveloped her in his arms, and brought his lips to hers.
Eldridge never told her when he was coming, yet she was always there, always alone. Was she a prostitute? Of sorts, he surmised, but during his time in Saigon, she was his alone, or so he liked to believe. It was good for his ego to think that he was important enough for the GRU to assign her just to him.
Eldridge suspected she did not have many options. She could become a bar girl and risk the sexually transmitted diseases that came fromentertaining hordes of U.S. servicemen, or she could work for the GRU, get set up in an average apartment overlooking a shit pond, take his information, and pass it to the Soviets.
Eldridge also knew she was smarter than she let on. She was a survivor.
And though he was well aware she was just a cutout playing her part, he could not help but have feelings for her. He was not supposed to know how she gave the information he passed her to the Soviets. That was the very reason for cutouts. They were intermediaries, used to facilitate the exchange of information. Every now and then he got curious and thought about following her to see who she met, to whom she passed the information, and if there were a sexual component to that liaison as well. Was it another cutout, or was it a handler? Did she transcribe what he told her? Did she leave it at a dead drop or meet with someone in person and pass it along verbally?
Whether it was the aftereffects of the adrenaline dump that came from almost dying in the ambush, the intense debriefing in Ambassador Bunker’s office, or the fear of knowing that he was expendable, Eldridge was exhausted. He needed a release, and he needed sleep.
She broke from the kiss, smiled, took him by the hand, and led him upstairs to her second-floor flat. Once inside with the door bolted, she turned back to him and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“I have a lot to tell you,” he said. “I almost died today. But first…” He slipped the robe from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor.
She watched him with curiosity as he slept. The rise and fall of his chest beneath the sheets had found a natural rhythm. Every now and again he would mumble. That was one of the aftereffects of the sodium amytal with which she had spiked his fourth scotch.
Her flat had only three rooms and a small balcony. From the kitchenshe could see through the living area and into the bedroom where the American snored. He was never rough with her and sometimes he visited socially. That was an acceptable part of their deal. She knew it could be a lot worse.
Usually, he passed along what information he had over a drink as soon as he arrived, eager for what was to come. She never wrote it down. She was blessed with an exceptional memory, and it was better if she was not caught in possession of anything incriminating should she be surveilled or questioned by authorities. Then she would pleasure him. She would cook, prepare drinks, bathe and massage him. Once he stayed for two days, but usually his forays were less than twenty-four hours. No sense in arousing suspicions by disappearing for too long.
Tonight was different. Tonight, he needed her immediately, and she gave him exactly what he desired. She had then drawn him a bath and poured him a scotch before preparing a meal of lemongrass chicken with a side of rice and pork dumplings. She then patted him dry, offered him a silk robe, and handed him another scotch. He sat at the small kitchen table and told her what needed to be passed to Moscow.
“The NVA prisoner of concern is dead and did not disclose the significance of‘Lam Nut Bau troi, Rung chuyen Trai Dat.’Whatever the secret was, it died with him.”
Lan did not want to know. She understood her role. Pass along the information. Well, that was not her only role.
His fourth scotch was spiked with the crystalline sedative. It was after that drink that he had begun to break down. Through the tears, his true thoughts and emotions, repressed over the previous hours, had found an outlet.
They were not supposed to target me.
I could have been killed.
I’m too important.
I was terrified.
The drug was not necessarily a truth serum, as there really was no such thing. It had been explained to her by the doctor who supplied it that the dose was a barbiturate, a central nervous system depressant that relaxed the user and induced sleep. She was to administer it and ask him about the information he had provided to test the veracity of his statements and ensure he had not been turned. He would wake up hours later with no memory of her questions, just a headache that was easy to blame on too much scotch.
When he awoke, she would pleasure him again and make him breakfast.
Then she would go see the doctor.
CHAPTER 22
DR. JEAN RENé BRéMAUDfelt more at home in Saigon than he did in Paris, perhaps because he had spent more than a quarter of his life in Southeast Asia. Paris also held a disproportionate number of unpleasant memories that served to remind him of why he seldom returned to the country of his birth.
A graduate of Faculté de Médecine de Paris, he was already a practicing doctor when the Germans invaded the Low Countries in May 1940, the Nazi war machine pushing through the Ardennes to avoid the fortifications of the Maginot Line. By mid-June, Paris was under the control of the Third Reich.
The next years were dark for all Parisians. Food rationing along with strict regulations and curfews were mandated for French citizens while German soldiers treated themselves to the finest cuisine, wine, and entertainment that Paris had to offer. Early on, a fellow doctor had been arrested while working in the hospital. The SS officers who marched that day through the halls of Hôtel-Dieu, a public hospital on the parvis of Notre-Dame, had not even let him finish his consult. Someone had informed on him. He and his family were deported east. Brémaud never saw or heard from them again. They were Jews.
His moral and ethical obligations as defined by the Greek physician Hippocrates to treat all in need of care superseded the patriotic draw toactively resist the Nazis. Instead, Dr. Brémaud resisted by using more covert measures. He walked a fine line, treating German soldiers and French citizens alike while secretly supporting the Resistance. He cared for wounded fighters in his home and passed them information that assisted in their escape to Allied countries. His status as a physician gave him the freedom to move between the two worlds all the while knowing that exposure of his double life could end in imprisonment, deportation east, or summary execution.
