The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [112]
“It’s normal in South Asia for people, even educated people, to horoscope important projects. They believe there are forces beyond human intelligence that have an effect on the acts of men—you can smile, Mr. Trumbull, but if you don’t understand that reality, and give it due weight, you’ll be making an arrogant mistake. You may think horoscopy is primitive, but it exists, and it’s used as a matter of course throughout the tropical world.
“You’ve seen that there are two sets of horoscopes, both drawn by the Chinese Yu Lung in Saigon. The first set was drawn up on September 8,1963. It predicted, quite accurately, that Diem and Nhu would be murdered and that the murder would be instigated by a powerful foreigner.
“On the basis of that horoscope, Diem and Nhu alerted their family. The head of the family, the Truong toe, who is identified in my report, took over the planning for the revenge of the deaths of Diem and Nhu. After reading Yu Lung’s horoscopes, no one in the family doubted that the murders would occur, and soon. Nor did they doubt the broker for these murders would be the President of the United States.
“On September 12 Yu Lung drew up the second set of horoscopes. September 12 was the tenth anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s marriage. You have the translations. The men horoscoped were Diem and Nhu again, President Kennedy, a North Vietnamese intelligence officer named Do Minh Kha, and Do Minh Kha’s grown-up daughter. Her name is Dao—or, in French, Nicole. In addition to a reading of zodiacal signs relating to these five persons, Yu Lung drew up an elaborate geo-mantic scheme. This showed the places, the geographical locations, where the feng shui, or the good and evil forces that act on men, would be strongest.
“Yu Lung’s readings confirmed that death was certain for Diem and Nhu. The family had already decided—through logic, not magic—that John F. Kennedy would be the murderer of their relatives. Yu Lung’s horoscope, based on the precise hour, date, and year of Kennedy’s birth and other public information —when and where he was wounded in the war, was stricken with his illness, was married, when his child died, when his older brother was killed—showed that there were patches in the lunar calendar in which Kennedy was vulnerable to violent death.
“One of these periods fell during the third week in November on the Western calendar. Kennedy was assassinated on Friday of the third week in November—the day of prime danger for him, as predicted by Yu Lung. That he was killed on that day will seem happenstance to you, but it didn’t look that way to Yu Lung or the Truong toe.
“Diem and Nhu were killed on November 1, our time. Kennedy died precisely twenty-one days later, on November 22. Diem’s personal lucky number was seven. Seven times three is twenty-one. Also, in Vietnamese funeral custom, special rites are performed for the dead every seventh day after the day of death. So there was, in the choice of November 22 as the date of the assassination, what one of my agents called ‘an elegance.’
“Now, as to the North Vietnamese intelligence officer, Do Minh Kha, and his daughter. Do is a member of one of the Ngo phais—he and Diem and Nhu were cousins of a sort. Do’s name, by the way, is a nom de révolution; he was born a Ngo. Kinship is a powerful thing in Vietnam. Do Minh Kha may have been a Communist and an enemy intelligence officer, but he was also a blood relation of Diem and Nhu. That would be, in a matter like this one, the more important loyalty.
“Yu Lung’s horoscopes, which predict the time of events, and his geomantic readings, which indicate the best place