Free Fatal Light by Richard Currey Page A

there.

SAIGON

1
    Saigon, the elegant midday half-dark of the Continental Hotel’s veranda, and we ordered drink after drink, all of them American-style: Mai Tai, Margarita, Manhattan, Black Russian.
    â€œHave you ever seen a black Russian?” the American correspondent asked me.
    â€œOh, yes,” the French journalist from L’Express answered, “there are quite a number in Moscow. I think many in Georgia.”
    â€œGeorgia.” The American grinned. “You can bet they’re all over Georgia.”
    â€œI mean the province of Georgia in the Soviet Union,” the Frenchman said, not smiling.
    â€œI know what you mean.”
    There was a pause as the moment passed, and the Frenchman asked me how much time I had on R&R. I told him about the malaria, my reassignment to Saigon.
    â€œYou have been already in the war?” he asked.
    â€œYes,” I said.
    The American began to talk about the assignment his paper had him on. He was from a large midwestern daily. “I’m down in these pits,” he said, “talking to these guys the MPs say are
VC shipped in for interrogation. And I mean these guys look like shit. They’ve been blackjacked and brassknuckled from here to Saturday night. I mean it looks like the MPs had been absolutely all over these poor fuckers. So I wire my paper, tell ‘em I want a go-ahead to investigate the possible torture of American prisoners—”
    The first subterranean shock wave interrupted him and he sat straight in his chair, voice collapsing to a dry whisper as the fireball ballooned out of the building across the street. The roof burst off in pieces, an aura of heat bowed the walls and flickered transparently, the windows vomited a palpable light. There was a second grunt under the street—the boiler—and I moved inside and behind the bar and lay down flat on the gleaming parquet. The Vietnamese bartender was already there, chin to hardwood. We looked at each other and waited.
    Debris clatter on the veranda. A rising wind, or the sense of one; the sound of fire. A helicopter in the distance. The sirens started, one behind the other, unwinding the sky.
    I stood up and from behind the bar I saw most of the drinkers crowded at the French doors, watching the blaze. I moved back to my table, trying to breathe evenly, ease the adrenaline in my blood, settle my stomach. My drink had overturned and pooled over the table’s veneer.
    The American returned to the table shaking his head. “Son of a bitch,” he said, “that scared the shit straight out of me.” He picked up his drink and turned to look again at the burning building. “Must be a story behind it, though,” he said seriously, sucking his teeth. He rehearsed a byline to himself: Who’s behind Saigon’s urban terrorism?
    A dog wandered onto the veranda, a soiled waif, meandering under tables, whiffing cuffs. The bartender poured some beer into an ashtray and the dog lapped it eagerly. With its mange and bloody sores and starvation ribs the animal still seemed happy, and when I looked the dog caught my eye and walked wearily to my chair, lay down beside me sighing a vast resignation.

2
    The call came across on a routine watch.
    I was standing duty with Perelli, nervous Italian from Philadelphia who chain-smoked and kept busy cleaning the telephones with cotton balls soaked in alcohol. He was wiping a phone when it rang, startled him, rang again. He answered, listened, hung up frowning at me.
    I was reading the office copy of Playboy . I did not look up.
    â€œSounds like a guy OD’d,” Perelli said. “We better go see about it.”
    I asked Perelli if we really needed two guys for that kind of job.
    â€œWhat do I know?” Perelli said. “Maybe they need fifty guys. So get off your ass.”
    I looked into the back office, told Master Sergeant Weldon we were going out on a call.
    â€œDon’t stay out too late,