A Covert Affair (26 page)

Jane's observations were very much in line with the attitudes of her OSS colleagues and were echoed in briefs and memorandums filed by other members of the OSS mission in Saigon. In a signed affidavit dated October 25, 1945, Major F. M. Small wrote:
“The general situation in Saigon reflects an intense desire on the part of the Vietnamese (Annamese) for independence and through hatred of them for the French and any other white people who happen to be in any way supporting or sympathizing with the French. The hatred of the Vietnamese for the French has been brought about by the not too enlightened policy of the French, which has been to exploit the Vietnamese to the greatest extent possible and treat them more or less with contempt.”

Small shared Jane's view of the Vietnamese resentment of the British for protecting French interests and by extension the growing resentment of the American military in Saigon as long as the Americans appeared to align themselves with British and French policy. He also stated unequivocally that Gracey's mishandling of the French POWs was
“the single immediate contribution to the intensification of the Vietnamese animosity to all whites in Saigon, and thus directly contributed to Dewey's death.”

Ironically, the official American policy at the time, to the extent that there was one, was not unfavorable to the Viet Minh. Jane surmised that part of this benevolence (
“on the part of some of the big shots at least”
) was motivated largely by economic interest: with the British, French, and Dutch on the verge of being kicked out of their resource-rich colonies, the Americans could swoop in and take over those markets. Yet not even this rationale was allowed to impinge on the silence that was preserved on all long-term political issues in Asia that might involve offending the Allies. At the same time, the European division of the State Department was arguing that a strong recovered France was vital to postwar Europe; it insisted, as Moffat later put it, that
“
to get the French back on their feet we should go along with practically anything that the French wanted.”

So despite some misgivings, Washington went on supplying the
French with new American-made military equipment. The foreign correspondents in Saigon were reporting that most French officers carried American .45 automatic pistols, and the poorly blocked out U.S. Army insignia was still visible on many of their jeeps and trucks. It was likely that this would create the impression that Washington tacitly approved of the French policy, which would do nothing for America's reputation in the region in the years to come.

Jane was billeted at the Hotel Continental, which was full of Allied officers and intelligence units, as well as the remaining members of Dewey's beleaguered OSS mission. The classic French colonial–style hotel, located at the end of rue Catinat, had been built at the turn of the century by a home-appliance tycoon who wanted to provide luxury accommodations for wealthy tourists after their long cruise, and Jane had stayed there on her first jaunt to the Far East. These days the hotel was generally referred to as “Radio Catinat” because it was the favorite hangout of the foreign press—
The New York Times
had its bureau on the first floor,
Newsweek
on the second—and was awash in rumors and speculation.

On her first day there, she ran into Edgar Snow, a celebrated war correspondent and the author of
Red Star over China
, a book about the early days of the Communist movement and the rise of Mao. He still had the aura of a glamorous boy reporter, though he looked tired and older than his forty years (successive bouts of dengue fever, malaria, and scurvy will do that). Snow was working on a series for
The Saturday Evening Post
on the aftermath of the war in the East. A staunch anti-imperialist, he made no secret of his sympathy for the Annamese, and he obstinately inserted his political views into his dispatches. He was an adventurer—a romantic at heart—and more moral than ideological. Jane liked him and considered him
“the best journalist”
she had ever known.

The violence continued unabated, so that it was next to impossible for Jane to do any real reporting, let alone produce her daily crop of intelligence telegrams. Saigon was besieged. One afternoon, while she and Ed Snow were having a drink together at a sidewalk café, some Viet Minh came by and began lobbing hand grenades in among the tight
cluster of tables, sending everyone diving for cover. Days later, she and Ed were walking down rue Catinat when they came upon a Viet Minh who had just tossed a grenade into the window of the French Information Office. An outraged French housewife, who had been waiting in line at the neighboring bakery, had cornered the culprit and was viciously assaulting him. At any time of day or night, they would hear explosions followed by the low, mournful whistle of the ambulance and the racing sound of police and military vehicles on their way to the devastation. For a short time, the streets would remain deserted. Even the ubiquitous
pousse-pousses
(rickshaws) would make themselves scarce. Then people would drift slowly back and it would all begin again, the turmoil of a new day. Menaced by all the explosions, Jane spent most of the time confined to the hotel with the other reporters.

By the end of the month, they had both had enough and took the same plane to Bangkok. Ed spent the whole flight with his head bowed over his baby Hermes typewriter furiously pounding out his story on Indochina. When she tried to assemble her notes, Jane found she had only a few scrawled pages and ended up relying on Ed for
“practically all”
her information. She attached the few pages of foolscap to her lengthy report on Indonesia. Ed later wrote that when he spoke of what he had witnessed in Saigon to General Douglas MacArthur, the veteran soldier responded with surprising feeling:
“If there is anything that makes my blood boil, it is to see our allies in Indochina and Java deploying Japanese troops to reconquer these little people we promised to liberate. It is the most ignoble kind of betrayal, Snow, and it puts our cause in jeopardy everywhere in the Orient.”

At Bangkok's Don Muang Airport Jane almost fell into the open arms of her pal Howard Palmer. Young Palmer had become famous in OSS circles for a stunt that had taken place a few months before the end of the war. The regent, Pridi Phanomyong, leader of the Free Thai, who risked his office every day by working with the OSS, had warned that Palmer, for his own safety, needed to be moved out of the house where he had set up his secret radio station. Arrangements were made to smuggle him to a new location, and he was put on the floor of an official Thai limousine, covered by a blanket. The move proved, in Howard's
words,
“as secret as La Guardia going to fire.”
Halfway across town, the limo got stuck behind a parade in honor of the Japanese emperor's birthday, and when the driver honked to clear the road, the horn stuck. The honking continued as Howard, sweating in the back, pleaded with the Thai driver to stop politely entreating the horn to “shush” and pull out the goddamn wire. Finally, at an intersection, an irritated Japanese officer raised the hood and silenced the horn, and the car proceeded to its destination without further incident.

Howard had established a new OSS headquarters in an old palace on the outskirts of the city called Suan Kularb (Garden of Roses), a vast European-style chalet of stucco and stone, with a brightly colored tile roof, marble pillars and turrets, and all the fairy-tale trimmings. The palace was set back from the road in the middle of a large compound that showed signs of neglect, as did the bedraggled rose bushes lining the long graveled drive. Still, Jane had to hand it to Howard, he knew how to pick his hideouts. She was disappointed to learn she would not be staying in such majestic surroundings until she heard Alex MacDonald complaining that the OSS headquarters was as crowded as a college dormitory on homecoming weekend. Among the many lodgers were several agents from the Thai underground, as well as Ed Taylor, who had flown in from Rangoon in mid-August to oversee the evacuation of the American POWs. As a favor, they grudgingly agreed to make room for Ed Snow.

It turned out Howard had arranged for Jane to have an elegant pavilion all her own, a smaller, gingerbreadish affair in the Dusit district, the official part of town. Bangkok was full of palaces—winter and summer palaces, city and country palaces—all built by the old kings of Siam for their extended families. Pridi, courting favor with the Americans, had made some of these royal residences, complete with their large household staffs and chefs, available to the OSS. It helped that Palmer's father had been dean of the Bangkok Christian College before the war and was an old friend of Pridi. Howard had clearly taken full advantage of the catering; he sheepishly admitted to having packed on fifteen pounds. Jane noticed he had taken to wearing floppy Chinese trousers to accommodate his new girth.

As soon as she was settled, Jane began making inquiries all over the Thai capital in an effort to locate the camp where Leo was being held. In the end, the Swedish consul general directed her to a Japanese internment camp on the outskirts of Bangkok. Once again, Jane found herself confronted by a mulish Japanese commander who refused to release his prisoner without the consent of the British authorities.
“But I had Howard with me,”
she recalled. “We put on our usual ‘we own the world act' and succeeded in getting Leo out and only Howard knew he was my ex-husband.” Unlike the POWs she had helped evacuate in Batavia, Leo was in fairly good shape. He had been housed in an old villa with a small group of Dutch prisoners and had not suffered unduly. Although thinner and sprouting less hair than when she had last seen him, he had managed to triumph over his circumstances with his usual
“stern self-discipline.”
She had never doubted it for a minute. His first words upon seeing her were
“Of all the millions of Americans, they had to send you!”

She took Leo back to her palace and let him get cleaned up. She found him some clothes to wear and even managed to wangle the use of a jeep. That was about all the succor she was prepared to offer her ex. They went for long drives, took in a few gaudy temples, and talked about their wartime experiences. He still thoroughly disapproved of her. Tiresomely earnest, he considered the OSS inept for employing someone with her radical views, and he made it clear he would have preferred being rescued by the military. The war had not mellowed Leo. Nothing would. His government made arrangements to evacuate him to the Netherlands. He was made a colonel in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army and dispatched to Japan as a member of the Dutch delegation of the Far Eastern Commission. It was only much later that she learned that Leo was not a diplomat as he had always led her to believe. His dull-sounding desk job—head of the Japanese Section of the Bureau of East Asiatic Affairs of the Netherlands East Indies Government in Batavia—was actually a cover for a Dutch counterespionage organization. All the time they had been married, he had been secretly monitoring the subversive activities of Japanese and Chinese Communists in Java. Boring, balding old Leo was a spy.

Bangkok made for a lovely change from the chaotic and threatening atmosphere in Saigon. Jane was enjoying palace life. It was wonderful to indulge in a spell of luxury after so many weeks of hardship.
“There was no shooting,”
she recalled, “my war was over, my revolutions were over.” The palace Howard had put at her disposal was opulent, with gleaming polished floors, overstuffed Victorian furniture, and ancient Siamese objets d'art—every precious item stamped with the royal arms of Thailand. Knowing her proclivity for mischief, he had threatened her with court-martial if she tried
“to swipe anything.”
Jane could not resist taking one small memento but for Howard's sake settled for some sheets of royal stationery.

Despite the heavy presence of British occupying troops, Bangkok was bursting with an uninhibited gaiety. Unlike the situation in Indonesia and Indochina, here the Free Thai government was in charge and had made speedy work of disarming the Japanese. The new government had been rewarded by the United States' reestablishing relations and agreeing to vote for its admission into the United Nations. If only Britain's demands for a settlement could be modified—among them monopoly rights to Thai oil and timber, rubber, and rice exports; control of shipping; and commercial aviation rights—there was hope the country could escape colonial, if not economic, bondage. The British bitterly insisted they only wanted their due: Thailand had aided and abetted the Japanese during the war and reparations were owed. Still, hopes seemed to be high. The streets were crowded with people chattering and laughing. Their good cheer was infectious. Jane ran into OSS colleagues and friends from all over the CBI. She caught up with Alex MacDonald, who was a member of the Thai mission, and exchanged news of Betty. Alex, who shared Jane's sympathy for the anticolonial movement, agreed to talk to Ed Snow on background and helped him arrange interviews for his
Saturday Evening Post
article “Secrets from Siam.”

The tiny shops were filled with an array of luxury goods, the shelves crowded with things Jane had not seen since leaving the United States. Silk stockings, for example, were so plentiful the soldiers were using them to clean their guns. There was an astonishing amount of jewelry
for sale, superb and quite cheap, and she would have “bought the place up” if she had had the money. Even Ed Snow was tempted. Buying anything turned out to be a challenge for Jane, for not only had she not been paid for several months, but the Japanese occupation yen she had been given for expenses, while still in circulation, was worthless. No self-respecting shopkeeper would touch the defeated currency, instead rattling off a long list of what was acceptable, everything from Dutch guilders and Indian rupees to francs, pounds, and the rare American dollars. Not to be cheated out of her first real shopping expedition in more than a year, Jane begged Ed to part with some cash and convinced Howard to extend her a small loan from the OSS reserves he kept in a safe in his office. She picked up some small treasures, a few rings and silver belts, but her best find was
“a sixteenth-century, solid bronze head of Buddha, weighing fifteen pounds.”