Page 110 of Cry Havoc

CHAPTER 36

Grand Métropole Hotel

Hanoi, North Vietnam

KIRILL DVORNIKOV SAT WITHAdrik Voronin at a table at the Grand Métropole Hotel’s Le Beaulieu restaurant in Hanoi. They were situated under an awning just off the sidewalk overlooking Ngo Quyen Street and had just finished bowls of potato and leek soup. They took most of their meals at the hotel, as it was close to the Viet Minh Ministry of Defense Intelligence Headquarters. Even Dvornikov had to admit that the food rivaled most meals he had enjoyed in Paris, though today’s lunch was interrupted by a late-afternoon breeze that carried with it odors of fish sauce and shrimp paste from an unseen street food vendor down the block. The pungent aroma mixed with that of rotting garbage and the exhaust from a never-ending flow of mopeds, but it was either sit outside or suffer the indignity of the sauna-like conditions of Grand Métropole’s interior. A nearly empty bottle of 1966 Vincent Dauvissat Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos sat in an ice bucket to the side of the table.

Located near the banks of the Sông Cái River and just south of H?Tây Lake, the French colonial hotel had provided accommodations for the most discerning of travelers since 1901. It was the closest Hanoi could get to Paris. Ho Chi Minh used the Métropole as a meeting place whennegotiating with the French, and such luminaries as Charlie Chaplin, his wife Paulette Goddard, Somerset Maugham, and Graham Greene had enjoyed its comforts. Dvornikov wondered if the bomb shelter built under the courtyard would crumble beneath the explosive might of an American GBU 1000. He glanced up at the sky. With any luck he would never find out.

He waved his hand over his empty bowl to ward off a swarm of bugs.

Fucking mosquitos!

Get me back to Paris.

The nearby Sông Cái River transported silt downstream from its headwaters in the Yunnan province in southwestern China, giving it a reddish-brown hue. The river, lake, and deltas made Hanoi a breeding ground for mosquitoes and the malaria they carried. Dvornikov had avoided the disease thus far, but knew it was only a matter of time. Perhaps he could get out of Indochina before he contracted it?

The whole city was a disorganized mess of interconnected streets and alleys with French colonials, apartments, and office buildings interspersed with shanties and Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist temples and pagodas. If Dvornikov never saw another temple or pagoda it would be too soon.

Their hotel was a short walk to the Hanoi Opera House on Ba Dinh Square, built by the French a half-century earlier. Its design was modeled on the Palais Garnier in Paris, where Dvornikov had been many times, though this facsimile in Hanoi was built on a much smaller scale. He would walk from the Grand Métropole to the opera house and on to the Sông Cái River each morning to clear his head. It was time to move a piece on the board.

A waiter appeared.

“May I get you anything else, monsieur?” he asked, directing his question at Dvornikov even as he set a scuffed glass Coca-Cola bottle and new glass with ice in front of Voronin.

Coke was difficult to come by in Hanoi due to the embargo, but that was one of the many benefits of staying at the Grand Métropole. They had their ways.

“Yes, I’m going to switch it up—a bottle of 1959 Chateau D’Yquem,” the major answered.

“Good choice, monsieur.”

“It’s a little young, but I know you don’t have the ’37, so it will have to do.”

“Very well, monsieur,” the waiter said, removing both bowls and disappearing inside.

They had been sitting in silence for the better part of an hour. Dvornikov needed to think.

He could tell Sergeant Voronin was about to snap. The heat and mosquitos were wearing on him. It was only a matter of time before he went off the reservation again. The major suspected that Voronin was only holding it together because he knew he owed Dvornikov his life.

Two plates of foie gras arrived next. Voronin devoured his much faster than one should.

“Do you know the joke about vodka in Moscow?” Dvornikov asked his companion, breaking their self-imposed silence.

“There are many.”

“This is the one about the man standing in a kilometer-long line waiting to buy a bottle.”

Voronin shook his head and took a sip of his Coke.

“I don’t think I have heard this.”

“He tells his friend who is also in line that he has had enough of the wait, that it’s driving him mad, so he’s going to walk to the Kremlin and kill Brezhnev. About two hours later he returns and gets back in line with his friend who asks him, ‘Did you kill him?’ ‘Kill him?’?” the man says. ‘That line was longer than this one.’?”

Voronin let out a rare laugh.

“You should be careful, Major. If the wrong officer hears you say that, you will be sent east to the gulag.”

Dvornikov waved his hand in dismissal and took another sip of chilled wine.