Last Man Out (42 page)

I was going to have to pay off Loi and let him fend for himself. If there was a negotiated halt to the North Vietnamese advances, he would face the prospect of finding a new job. If the GVN was near collapse, as I believed, Loi would almost certainly have a bleak future. Either way he was on his own. He was despondent and dejected, and he thought that I, personally, did not want him. Loi had worked for the Americans for most of the previous ten years, but he wasn’t on the first team, with the interpreters. I avoided Loi, although there were times that afternoon and evening when he tried to talk with me alone.

The next day we resumed our inventory, and I started individual meetings with the staff members so that I could pay them off. I sat behind a desk in the open bay area of the office, with the boxes of money on the floor beside me. As each worker came up, usually with one of the interpreters standing by to ensure that there were no missed communications, we discussed their employment history to arrive at the exact length of service with the U.S. government. Most had termination bonuses of one month’s salary for each year of employment, plus there were other considerations, such as leave earned and not taken, outstanding loans, breaks in service. Another factor that confused the exact termination figure was a period during which contracts had been written in U.S. money amounts, which implied that U.S. rather than Vietnamese money was owed. When we arrived at a final
amount, usually in two currencies, I counted out the money from my boxes. Then the worker counted it out and signed for it.

Finally, everyone was paid except Loi. I called him into the office, and the interpreters left. With his hat in hand, he stood in front of my desk and cried. He said that he didn’t want his money, he didn’t want to be laid off, he wanted to continue working for the U.S. government.

I told him that it wasn’t in the cards. My chest hurt and my eyes watered, but there was nothing more to say. Loi wiped his eyes and looked at the floor.

My voice breaking, I told him to sit down and we would figure out what he was owed. I gave him every consideration and added six months’ salary as a bonus for being my bodyguard over the last few months. I laid an impressive amount of money on the desk. He signed for the money and stuffed it into his pack.

That night I went by the orphanage for the last time. I said good-bye to the sisters, and they told the kids that I was leaving. One boy with crossed eyes, who was possibly retarded, shook his head no. A sister was holding him. I tickled him under his arms, and he laughed.

The province chief arrived the next morning, and I asked that his staff check the serial numbers on all of the items before he signed for them. By midday everything had been accounted for, and the province chief signed for the compound.

As a final piece of business, I asked Loi to drive the two interpreters and their families to Can Tho. I was thinking that maybe I could find something for him to do later, but did not tell him that. He looked closely at me to see if there was hidden meaning in my request, sensed there was, and enthusiastically said he’d get the men there safely. I could trust him.

They arrived in two days, having fallen in with a military convoy. I sent the two interpreters to General Hung’s headquarters, where I had located office space for them, but I had found nothing for Loi. Mac and Sarge, also closing compounds, were having similar problems in dealing with longtime staffers who had done nonsensitive work. Large numbers of Vietnamese, who had been good loyal employees of the U.S. government, were looking for seats out if the Americans were evacuated. I told Loi to go home in the truck that he had brought from Vi
Thanh and see his wife, do something with his money, and come back in one week to my apartment. Good plan, he said, relieved to have continuing contact with me.

By the first of April, all CIA compounds in the delta had been closed except for My Tho, Chau Doc, Rach Gia, and the base offices at Can Tho. Including immediate families, we had a list of fewer than 150 KIP.

Bill A., another base officer working out of Can Tho, located an American with a Vietnamese girlfriend who claimed to know of an island out from Rach Gia that was loosely controlled by the GVN and did not have a Communist presence. The island might be useful as a temporary safe haven for our KIP if we needed a staging area away from Can Tho. Conceivably, if South Vietnam fell, we could move the people to this island for later pickup by the U.S. Air Force or Navy.

In early April, My Tho was hit with rumors that the VC were ready to launch human-wave attacks on the city. The men in the agency compound finished shredding classified documents and left for Saigon in the fastest vehicles available. The compound was ransacked that night before the Nhung guards could get control and roust the intruders. I went up the next day to close it permanently.

The staff was assembled in the courtyard when I arrived, apparently ready for what they anticipated would be an inquisition into how the compound walls had been breached and some of the compound property stolen. I listened patiently to their stories and sent the senior Vietnamese staffer at the compound to get the province chief’s aide-de-camp. When he left, I told the remaining staffers to line up outside the office and come in to see me one by one. With four exceptions I was going to pay off all of them and dismiss them from U.S. government employment.

I had finished paying off the staff, who were quickly leaving to put away their money, when the aide-de-camp arrived. I told him that I was turning the compound over to the province chief in forty-five minutes, and I wanted someone there to take responsibility, plus a guard force. The aide-de-camp left, and I dispatched the four men who had been designated KIP to get their families and start making their way to Can Tho. I had closed the compound
in a little over two hours, compared with the two days to close Vi Thanh.

As I waited for the province chief, I walked around the compound. My Tho, the first province south of Saigon, had been used as a support base for some Saigon operations. The compound was an old French villa, comfortably outfitted with nice furniture. A dozen vehicles were parked in the motor pool/garage, the offices had typewriters, copying machines, and photo equipment, the game room was filled with movies and recreational equipment, and the kitchen had a vast inventory of stainless steel cookery. The province chief arrived, out of breath; I told him that I was turning the compound over to him. He signed a receipt handwritten on a piece of notebook paper and I left with the remaining money and the staff receipts in a box.

As I was being driven out the gate I observed the province chief, anxious to see exactly what he had been given, hiking up his pants and walking into his new facility.

A few days later I left the consulate in Can Tho with Sarge at the end of a long workday and we went to the Delta Club for dinner. Glenn R., one of the senior officers at the base, was the club manager. For weeks he had almost given away perishable items. A T-bone steak dinner with a bottle of wine cost less than a dollar. Mac joined us and the three of us had a feast. In pain from overeating, I returned to my apartment before curfew and went to bed early.

The first explosion jarred the apartment building, and I was awake immediately. Several more explosions followed. I decided that the explosions were on the other side of the consulate, and my apartment wasn’t in danger. Jim D. came on the handheld radio and called Don K., who was on duty in the base area of the consulate. Don said the explosions were artillery rounds landing in the shanty area down the road. He couldn’t imagine why the VC were firing there.

Jim asked for a head count. As we were calling in, Don broke in to say that a fire had started near the impact area. It was growing fast and coming toward the consulate.

With almost everyone accounted for, Jim received a preliminary report from a base asset at General Hung’s headquarters.
The South Vietnamese military’s best guess was that the VC were firing rockets randomly into town as harassment.

Don came back on the radio and said the fire was building in intensity. He could feel the heat when he opened one of the rear windows by Phyllis’s desk. We heard several more explosions.

I got up, dressed, and went to the roof of the apartment building. The flames raging beyond the consulate were higher than any building in the area. The street below was becoming clogged with people trying to get away. Sirens went off on the other side of my building as fire trucks tried to make their way through the mob.

The wind was swirling and tossing around ashes and bits of charred wood. The fire was so intense that it was pulling air into it, but a natural breeze was blowing our way and the wall of flames was leaning in our direction. There was no doubt that the fire was heading toward the consulate.

Several helicopters with searchlights passed over. The noise from the street below competed with the loud popping from the fire.

Glenn lived in an apartment immediately across from the consulate. He confirmed to Jim over the radio that the fire appeared to be heading in their direction.

Don, knowing Glenn lived close by, said, “Ah, good to know I’m not alone in this part of town.”

I said that I was also nearby.

Glenn volunteered to go across the street to help Don. Jim told the radio communicator and me to join them so that, if the consulate had to be abandoned, we could shred the files in the vault and remove or destroy the communications equipment.

The fire was getting closer, Don said, and the building was getting hotter.

I went down to the street level, and the guard in front of the building helped me open the door against the screaming people outside. Suddenly I was out in the middle of the masses. I was initially carried away up the street before I got my feet under me and began pushing my way against the crowd. It was like swimming up a raging river. If I stopped pushing forward, I was swept back. People were carrying personal items on bikes and carts, on top of their heads, in baskets. Children were screaming. Several
pedicabs, filled with household items, were mixed in with the crowd. An armored personnel carrier, leading fire trucks, came down the street. Sirens were wailing. People were screaming.

The guard at the front gate of the consulate helped me get inside and pushed away people who were trying to get in through my legs. Glenn had already arrived, after a struggle just to get across the street. In time the communicator also arrived.

It was hot in the base offices and even hotter near the rear windows. The fire covered the whole skyline to the west. Ash swirled around the building. We heard loud popping and burning noises. Sirens were still going off pell-mell in the street over the roar and screams of the crowd.

The communicator went into the commo room and Don, Glenn, and I went into the vault and began shredding the personnel files on the most sensitive of the active operations in the delta. We had a sense of urgency and moved quickly and quietly. Periodically we ventured out of the vault to look at the fire. It was still intense, but, as we finished shredding, it did not appear to be gaining on the consulate.

Don went down to the commo room to help the communicator prepare items to be destroyed or removed.

After he left, Jim called and told us to destroy the money in the safe. The finance officer gave us the combination over the radio. Soaked in sweat, we went into the finance office where, against the near wall, sat an old black Wells Fargo–type safe, with a dial on one of the double doors and a heavy brass handle on the other. We tried the combination and pushed the handle down after spinning the dial for the final turn. Slowly we opened the doors and there—from the bottom to the top of the safe—were stacks of money.

Glenn whistled and we both stared inside the safe. I had never before seen that much money in one place—U.S. tens, twenties, and hundreds, plus Vietnamese piasters. A person could work hard all his life and never make the amount of money that was on even one shelf in that safe. It was a sight right out of Hollywood, a CIA safe filled with money.

We could hear the popping from the fire. I wiped sweat from my forehead. Glenn picked up the radio and asked Jim D. if he was sure he wanted us to destroy all this money.

“Yep,” he said.

Picking up a box of piasters, we went to work at the shredder, but it was quickly obvious that it would take us hours. We had to take apart each bundle and separate the money into piles small enough to get through the shredder. So we rolled a couple of fifty-five-gallon drums equipped with thermal chemicals for emergency destruction of paper into the finance office and filled them with the remaining Vietnamese money.

We put the American money into cardboard boxes. There seemed to be something patently wrong about destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars of U.S. currency. We told Jim that if we had to abandon the consulate, we would destroy the Vietnamese money in the drums and take the U.S. money, with the communications stuff, to Glenn’s apartment across the street.

Don came back upstairs and said we were crazy if we thought we could get across that street, still clogged with people, while carrying boxes of money.

“It’s only paper, burn it, shred it,” he said, looking at Glenn and then me.

Standing in front of the safe, I said, “We can’t do that.”

“Why not?” asked Don.

“Just can’t. It’s not right. I come from the South and we just don’t do things like that down there. Just look at all that money. We’ll put it in the trunk of one of the cars down by the motor pool and we’ll drive across the street. It’s taxpayers’ money.”

“It’s paper,” Don yelled.

“It’s money,” I said.

So we carried the U.S. taxpayers’ money down into the commo room and stacked the boxes alongside the equipment Don and the communicator had prepared for removal. We went back upstairs. The fire had not come closer and appeared to be diminishing, although a wall of flame still covered the area behind the consulate. We had done all we could.

I got a cup of coffee and slumped in a desk chair. Glenn went to the roof where the Congen had set up a crisis center to watch the fire. MacNamara was wearing a flak jacket and a helmet with a large white star painted on the front. He told a consular officer later that he considered himself equivalent to a brigadier—one-star—general in the U.S. Army.