Naked in Saigon Read Online Free PDF

He leaned on one elbow. “Yeah, I’ve been at the bars tonight; I was talking to an Air Force staff sergeant who wants to blow the cover off the biggest scam in Asia. There’s people making huge money out of this war, unbelievable money.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Selling Air Force service contracts.” Connor’s eyes shone with that special kind of fever he caught whenever he stumbled onto a story. “See, there’s only a small part of the Air Force that flies missions, a handful of hotshot pilots. But the Air Force is like an iceberg--what you see is the very smallest part. Most USAF guys never leave their base, their job is to make sure the top guns and their ground crew get fed and don’t get bored between missions. To do that, they have to decide which refrigerators to order, which liquor brands to stock in the mess. They’re in charge of buying everything from slot machines to potato chips. In dollars this adds up to huge numbers. My guy says there are four staff sergeants out at Tan Son Nhut taking massive kickbacks on everything from bourbon to Cheerios.”
    I didn’t like this, it sounded like the sort of operation Angel would run, the sort of investigation that could get him killed.
    “Be careful, Connor.”
    “Fuck them all, this has to be exposed. You wouldn’t believe the names I heard mentioned today, the same people whose names kept coming up when I was researching my other books. Winstone, Salvatore, Garcia, it’s like an honour roll from the Bay of Pigs.”
    I didn’t react when he said his name. I knew he was in Saigon, I had known for a long time, even before Connor had told me he wanted to come here. The truth of it was, Reyes was the reason I had insisted on coming with him.
    It made no sense to still feel like this. He was the past now, even if the flame did still burn a little. I was married now.
    But when I closed my eyes I could still feel his hands on me.
    “I had a visitor today,” I said.
    “Here?”
    “Barged their way in just before breakfast.”
    “What visitor?”
    “A man called Angel Macheda. This guy Salvatore you just mentioned? He’s married to his daughter.”
    “What the fuck was he doing here?”
    “He was looking for you.”
    “For me?”
    “I don’t know what Angel is doing in Saigon, but if he’s here, it means the Salvatore family have business here and they don’t like anyone poking around in their little schemes, Connor. You need to take a step back.”
    “They don’t scare me.”
    “That’s because you don’t know them.”
    Connor grabbed her. “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”
    “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me,” I said. The irony seemed lost on him. He was peerless as an investigative journalist, but the one subject he was clueless about was his own wife. It hit me for the first that he didn’t know much about me because he didn’t want to know, not until now, anyway.
    “This is all to do with Havana.”
    “I know all those people you talked about, Connor.”
    “Why didn’t you say something?”
    “Because the thing I loved about you was that you weren’t part of that world. It was what I wanted to get away from. I shouldn’t have married a journalist, should I?”
    “You want to bring me up to speed?”
    “Not really.”
    “This Angel Macheda, you knew him in Havana?”
    “Of course.”
    “How?”
    I thought about that, wondered how much of the truth our marriage could stand. “He was a family friend.”
    “Who else?”
    “Reyes Garcia.”
    Perhaps it was the way I said his name, he understood straight away. “Okay,” he said.
    “There’s a lot of things I’ve never told you about myself, Connor. In a way I hoped you’d find out for yourself. It’s your job.”
    “I thought if you wanted me to know, you’d tell me.” His hand slipped beneath the covers, found my thigh. He gingerly moved it up to my hip. “Were you lovers?”
    “It was a long time ago.”
    “What