Topaz - Leon Uris [109]
Instead, André continued to fight as a purist, speaking up no matter who was offended. He became a bone in many throats. Far too skilled and valuable to dismiss, he was punished by banishment to the Far East in an attempt to do something about France’s failing fortunes in Vietnam.
And so another farewell to Nicole, who returned to Montrichard in her seventh month of pregnancy to await the birth of their child.
From his base in Saigon, André was on a constant merry-go-round between Calcutta, Hanoi, Singapore, and other centers of Oriental activity.
It was soon apparent that Nicole would never be able to join him in Saigon. That part of the world was a cesspool of privation after the war, and his mission such that she would have had to be alone most of the time.
The handwriting was on the wall. A situation disastrous to France was shaping up in Vietnam, and his work was a total frustration. There was just so long that André could go it by himself.
The woman’s name was Yvette Chang. She was a Eurasian of French and Chinese parentage, the third daughter of a wealthy Saigon merchant. Her beauty was exceptional. Yvette Chang was the one to break André’s loneliness and ease the baffling disappointments of his mission.
Yvette Chang was also to become an innocent instrument in causing André an overflow of guilt. Just after he had come to know her as his woman, he received the cable from his father:
I AM SORRY TO INFORM YOU OF NICOLE’S MISCARRIAGE, YOUR SON WAS BORN DEAD. NICOLE RECOVERING.
And then, as suddenly as he had been banished, he was recalled to Paris.
13
“ANDRÉ,” NICOLE CRIED, “YOU did not kill your son. You’ve got to stop grieving.”
“He might have lived if I had been here. Now we will never be able to have another one.” He had taken the same sense of guilt his father took at the death of his mother.
“We have Michele and we have each other. And, for the first time, there is a chance to settle down. Jacques told me this new post of yours in America has every chance to be permanent. André, please, I’m all right now.”
“I’ll make it up to you, Nicole. I swear I’ll make it up to you.”
“Shhhh ... there’s nothing to make up. Only to begin anew, to really begin for the first time.”
“Nicole. I know you know about her. That girl in Saigon. You have to believe that she meant nothing to me. I was sick and lonely. It was hell out there. I was ... just very lonely.”
“You are never to mention it again, André ... never.”
André’s new mission was to establish himself in Washington in the French Embassy and help form an intelligence arm of the new NATO organization. Before he left France, Jacques called him to say that Pierre La Croix requested his presence at his country home.
The General still awaited the summons of his countrymen. Even now, as he wrote his memoirs of the war, his eyesight was failing. André was greeted with unusual hospitality, and he and La Croix settled before the fire of birch logs in the library.
“I asked you here today, Devereaux, because you have been chosen for a key mission. By the time you have established your office in Washington, France will no doubt have called upon me for leadership. You have never been among my close associates, yet I respect you as a Frenchman. It is well that you know the philosophical direction France must take in her return to greatness.”
The General offered André a cognac and a cigar. He then squinted into the fireplace and spoke as though to himself. “Our foreign policy will be kept flexible. If we tie ourselves up with a Western bloc, we will be swamped and dominated by the Americans. We must always mask our preparations with a thick veil of deception. We must deliberately mislead the very men we intend to use, as we do now by joining NATO. Then ... many treaties must be made to play one side against the other. You see, Devereaux, a man may have friendships, but a nation never.”
He stopped