The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [42]
“Tell Luong that Crawford is here,” Christopher said in French.
“Craww-ford?” she said.
Christopher repeated the name. “We’re friends,” he said.
She left the door ajar and Christopher stepped inside the house. A very young child sat up on a mat in the next room and stared silently at him. Christopher winked at the child; he could not tell its sex. Luong’s wife, fully clothed, came and gathered it up; Christopher heard her speaking softly in another room, and in a moment saw her go by the window, with all three of her children following behind her. Her hair was loose, and as she walked she reached behind her with both hands and fastened it with a clip.
“How did you find my house?” Luong asked.
Christopher handed him an envelope. “I’m sorry I didn’t see you in Bangkok. You’ll need this.”
“I waited three days,” Luong said. “When I thought it was useless, I came back.” He did not ask for an explanation; he was trained.
As they drank tea, sunlight filled the room. Luong had been much abroad. His parlor was furnished with Western sofas and chairs, and alpine scenes hung on the walls. The shrine of his ancestors, visible in a corner of an adjoining room, was crowded with cheap colored glasses filled with wax in which small flames burned on bits of cotton wick.
“Do you know anything of a person called Lê Thu?” Christopher asked.
Luong searched his mind. “Is Lê the family name or a given name?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought it might be a family name. I assumed it was a woman’s name.”
“The Lê were kings of this part of Vietnam before the Nguyen,” Luong said. “It’s a common family name, both in the North and the South.”
“This Lê Thu has some connection, I don’t know what, with the Ngo family.”
“The Ngos are not very accessible these days. They’re in mourning, you understand. And they’re learning to be careful again, like everyone else.”
“Can you find out the connection? But ask with care, Luong—it may be that opium is involved.”
“I’ll try. It may not be the sort of thing you can pay for.”
“I need to know who this person is, and where, and what is the connection to the Ngo family.”
“Where are you staying?”
“I’ll come here tomorrow, just before dawn. If you want me before then, write the time and the English word airborne above the urinal at the Pussycat Night Club on Tu Do Street. Do you know it?”
Luong smiled. “I know it. Be careful what you sleep with from that place—they’re all country girls and they don’t know about precautions.”
“We speak a great deal about precautions to each other, Luong.”
“Well, it’s a time to be careful. Why are you still asking about the Ngos? The important ones are dead, or gone away.”
“This is a different matter. They still exist, as a family.”
“Oh, yes,” Luong said. “Everywhere. They buried a lot of money—and a lot of democratic elements too.”
Luong’s remark was not meant as a joke. On his home ground, when he was working, he was a serious man. That was what had earned him the Thai girl Christopher had bought for him in Bangkok, and his house in Saigon, on a street where flowers grew beside the dirt walks.
“What are people saying about the Ngos since Diem and Nhu died?”
“That their luck ran out. In Vietnam, that’s always the explanation. We have no political analysts, only superstitions and fortune-tellers.”
“And killers.”
“Yes, we’ve always had a good cheap supply of those.”
“Do you think you have some sort of personal luck that keeps you alive, Luong?”
“Of course. Everyone believes that. Even some foreigners believe it, but not you yourself. I saw that in you from the first —you believe in nothing except the force of human intelligence. Isn’t that so?”
“I doubt even that.”
“I thought so. But there are other forces. One waits, and a force moves; it’s like water, soft and yielding, but also possessing great power.” Luong smiled.
“Lao-tzu,” Christopher said. “What’s your lucky number, Luong?”
Luong hesitated. “Eleven.”
“Has it come up lately?”
“Yes. Nhu wanted