Requiem for an Assassin

hidden antechambers, coffee tables and ashtrays absurdly at the ready, set out in melancholy hopes of a party that had moved on decades before. Even the fat geckos, feasting on insects attracted to the corridors’ stark fluorescent lighting, it was as though it had all been waiting for me.
    I followed one of the staircases down to the third floor, then made my way to a balcony at the end of the corridor. I had a perfect view of City Hall and the plaza in front of it. Excellent.
    There was only one problem: a single inset incandescent light in the ceiling directly above me. I took out a handkerchief and un-screwed it a few turns until it went out. I doubted anyone would notice and fix it before tomorrow. If they did, I would just unscrew it again.
    I took the stairs back down and walked over to the statue of Ho Chi Minh on the plaza in front of City Hall. I looked up at the hotel. The balcony I had darkened was noticeable, but not egregiously so. There were plenty of other lightless patches in the hotel’s façade, and I doubted Hilger would zero in on this one. Even if he did, he’d have no way of knowing I was standing there, shrouded in darkness.
    Saigon Tax was a little less familiar, primarily because it had gone upscale since I had last seen it. In addition to jewelry, watches, plasma televisions, and home theater systems, there was a section selling Panasonic massage chairs. Slowly but surely, Saigon was getting rich. But the layout was as I remembered: four floors, with an open atrium from the ground floor all the way up; three sets of staircases, two escalators, one elevator; entrances and exits on three sides. Perfect.
    Long into the night, I wandered District 1, the city center, re-familiarizing myself, absorbing details. It wasn’t just the Rex: I was astonished at how little the city itself had changed. I’d been to Bangkok less than a year earlier and the place was barely recognizable as the city I had first visited during the war, but communism had retarded things here, and it was only recently that Saigon had begun to take off. Some of the street names had changed, yes. And there were a few new high-rises—a Citibank building, one for HSBC—but the low skyline was largely the same. I recognized some of the Rex’s contemporaries: the Caravelle, with a tall new wing; the Majestic, still perched above the Saigon River. The presidential palace, whose wrought-iron gates had come crashing down under the North’s tank treads when the South fell in 1975, had been preserved and renamed the Reunification Palace, and was now a tourist attraction. I was amazed at the almost palpable presence of the young man who had walked these streets and seen these sights. I no longer was that man, but his memories were now mine, his dark gift to me; they united us as surely as the progeny of a dissolved and loveless marriage.
    I walked. The ubiquity of commerce, I noted, that too was unchanged: motorcyclists offering impromptu taxi rides; stores selling a few spare feet in a corner for someone to park a scooter; street vendors hawking secondhand watches and rebuilt engines and coconut milk in plastic cups. The raw capitalism, the economic dynamism, of the place was stunning. I wondered why anyone had ever feared that communism could take root in this culture. The North had swallowed Saigon like a diner ingesting a virus, and within twenty years the virus had so infected the host that Hanoi was calling for doi moi, politely described as “reforms,” more accurately understood simply as “capitalism.” Save these people from communism? Christ, it was Hanoi that needed saving now. We could have just sat back and enjoyed the show.
    But that would have required patience, I supposed, and perspective, too, neither of which was ever likely to feature prominently in anyone’s list of the top ten American virtues. Well, at least I wouldn’t have to participate in the current sequel: America Uses Military to Remake the Middle East and End Tyranny in Our Time.
    Sequel, my ass, I thought. It’s a fucking remake. And the end is going to be just the same.
    I was pleased to find the Opera House I remembered, now known as the Municipal Theater. Likewise, the Notre Dame cathedral, a remnant, along with City Hall, of French rule. I liked that the locals hadn’t tried to eradicate the country’s colonial heritage. Their acceptance, even embrace of the past suggested a cultural maturity I found I admired.
    I smiled. Maybe I was