I was nearly ready, very close to coming. Nguyen had already come. I had felt him stiffen, knowing he was about to come, and had put my hands under him, raising his belly off the sheets with the palm of one hand and encasing his hard cock with the other and stroking him until he had spilled his seed. And then I had taken him by the waist and lowered his midsection on the mattress again and resumed my slow, deep stroking inside him. I covered his brown little body with mine, my arms laced up under his arm pits, my legs covering his with his feet hooked on my lower calves, my lips buried in the hollow of his neck when he wasn't turning his lips to mine.
Mosquitoes buzzed angrily against the protective netting that covered my bed, centered in the room to catch whatever cross breeze could be captured in the hot, humid Vietnamese night. The rain was coming down in sheets outside the bungalow, sounding like the low roar of a train passing by in the distance. Candles flickered in the corner of the room, their light being reflected and scattered by the slowly churning ceiling fan above the foot of the bed. A gecko ran across the top of the headboard, stopping momentarily to watch the fucking and then go its merry way.
I turned my head and looked up into the roof of the canopied bed at the mirror I'd had installed when I took Nguyen on as my lover—when he had introduced me to the pleasures of man sex in Southeast Asia—so much more sensuous and guilt free than I had known before—and I became besotted with watching my larger, muscled body, working his lithe, little brown one or his succulent mouth working my cock before I took him. Appearing in the mirror to have full control, to be ravishing a small, powerless man, but knowing all along that Ngyuen was the experienced one, the one who was in full control.
I concentrated hard as I watched myself in the mirror—me holding every part of him still, with only my butt cheeks expanding and contracting, listening for the moan, watching for the moment that Nguyen's hips began to rotate, when his butt cheeks slowly moved in rhythm with mine, nothing else on our bodies moving, knowing that my cock was buried deep inside him. Watching for the moment of my release and the effect it had on his body, the expression on his face, half turned to where I could see it, his cheek rubbing the fine, moist cotton of the pillow casing.
Nguyen gave a little cry as my flow started, and I thought I heard another sound simultaneously—a rustling or a scraping outside the bedroom window of my Saigon bungalow. Maybe both. There shouldn't be anything stirring out there in the downpour. All of the usual night creatures out there knew to just wait a quarter hour and the rain would stop and they could come out onto the fetid earth of their playground once more.
"Shh, little one," I whispered, and I placed my hand over his mouth to stifle further noise. "I think I heard something."
Nguyen's body stiffened, as aware of the possibilities as I was, and he rolled out from underneath me and over the side of the bed to the floor as I reached under my pillow for my pistol, and he reached, at the same time, as he landed gracefully and noiseless on the teak flooring, for the M-16 I kept there under the bed.
I rolled to the floor on the other side of the bed, staying inside the netting, to the great disappointment of the night insects. We lay there, on opposite sides of the bed, breathing heavily for several minutes. But the moment passed; there were no other unexpected night sounds competing with the chirping of the night crickets that started up the instant the rain stopped, abruptly, like the closing of a spigot, and I muttered an all clear—at least I thought it was clear—to Nguyen, and we came back up on the bed and embraced. But that moment was lost now too. Reality had struck, even if it was a false reality—for now—and we had been avoiding the inevitable discussion.
The recent weeks in Saigon had been nerve-racking. We knew now it was just a matter of time. Four weeks if the intelligence Nguyen had passed to me was accurate. The sleuthing he'd done in connection with his news reporting job had concluded that there would be an offensive against the Cam Ranh Bay installations and, if that was successful, soldiers would be streaming down to Saigon for the final coup d'état here. This information had become key to our plans for the defense of the South. Forces had been retained at Cam Ranh Bay that we initially planned to move down to Saigon. Increasingly the embassy staff had been pulled into the compound, not to return to their apartments or bungalows before the danger was past—although few even pretended this was anything other than the prelude to the end—in fear of the night and of what lurked there. I was one of the last still sleeping outside of the compound. And it was now obvious even to me, in my blinders-on optimism, that this would be my last night in this bed too.
I had been putting on an act that fooled only me—not wanting it to be over, so pretending that it wouldn't be, against all indications to the contrary.
That was a sad thought. I had found paradise here in this bed—with Nguyen Van Trinh, South Vietnamese journalist by day and my willing sex slave by night. Although that even was a lie; it was I who was Ngyuen's sex slave. I never wanted this to end. But the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong insurgents of the South obviously had very different views on that. And increasingly their views were the only ones that counted.
"You've been a major source of information for me, Nguyen," I whispered. "I've had you on the evacuation list for some time now. Come to the embassy with me in the morning. I think this is it. And when I'm taken out, I want you to go with me. I've arranged for you to be on the list. Come away with me; I will take care of you."
"I must be in Thon Lac Nghiep tomorrow," Nguyen said. "My parents. They call and I must be there."
"We've discussed this before, Nguyen," I said. "I don't think you'll be safe when the Americans are gone. You've cooperated. You perhaps don't fully appreciate all you have told me—or who I work for. You must come out with me. I'll keep you with me. I promise."
"Perhaps, Jim," Nguyen answered, although I got the impression he was only humoring me. "You aren't safe here anymore. On that I agree. It is impossible to hide an American anywhere in Saigon now. You must move to the embassy compound, like the rest. I will come when I can—if I can."
"Promise? I love you. I don't want to lose you. You love me, don't you?"
Nguyen showed his feelings for me by pressing me on my back on the mattress and straddling my hips with his thighs and slowly riding my cock to another, mutual ejaculation, as I watched the languid movements of my lithe, brown lover in the mirror overhead.
In the morning, when I awoke, Nguyen was gone, as was the M-16. I didn't begrudge him that, though. If that got him to the sea and the village of Thon Lac Nghiep to the north of Saigon and then safely back to me again, I wanted him to have it.
I moved into the embassy compound that morning, and the next day we began the destruction of files. This went slowly, because all of us in the Station were called away for periodic Country Team meetings on the military situation. The military attaches kept saying that all indications were that North Vietnamese troops were moving toward Saigon, and, only the Station was holding out that they would divert to the coast, toward Cam Ranh Bay, before coming further south. They did that on the strength of my good source for the information—Nguyen.
Saigon, however, was in a panic. Helicopters were already shuttling back and forth from the embassy roof out to the battleships anchored off the coast with the embassy personnel deemed nonessential—their dependents having evacuated weeks earlier—and a large number of South Vietnamese officials and their families, people who had partnered with the U.S. forces in the futile effort to maintain a South Vietnamese Republic and who now were being evacuated because their loyalty was a death sentence for them, if—no, not if, when—the North Vietnamese took over in the South.
Back at the Station and working the shredders as fast as I could, I took a break when the shredder I was feeding overheated. I went out to the outer corridor to have a cigarette and to wait for the shredder to cool down. I had worked like a zombie all day, worried to death over Nguyen, and for that reason trying to turn my mind off and just sit there and feed sheet after sheet of top secret paperwork into the shredder. Not for the first time I wondered why we'd created such a mountain of paper out of a losing cause. My hands trembled as I lit my cigarette, and my worries flooded my brain—wondering where he was and whether I should go back to my bungalow in case he was there. I was frantic to see him safely with the other Vietnamese we'd brought into the compound for evacuation.
