3:35 PM Welcome To Saigon, Mr Watanabe

A Saito Corporate Jet touched down on Tran Hung Đạo Airport, amid gunfire and destroyed commercial jets. Direct from Tokyo walked out Saito’s VP of Compliance. He opened his umbrella to protect his casual $7,456 power suit. The outside was lined with armed guards. The weather was 28°C and pouring rain. Stretched across the tarmac were lines of guards duty-bound to focus on their mission and ignore the torrents dousing their uniforms. Though the sun was long gone, the bright pink haze of the city’s light pollution and hot air made it feel like a summer afternoon. They told him the rain would be deafening. It wasn’t; he could still hear the gunshots and the screams.

“Welcome to Saigon, Watanabe-sama!” bubbled his ever-helpful Mitsuki Haiku™ Gold Star Model 30 assistant.

“Missy, please note that the escort team consists of one company of the Empire’s troops, consisting of 136 men, likely ten snipers.”

“Uh-oh, that’s not what we agreed to! Shall I lodge the complaint with the embassy?”

“For now, just log.”

“Of course, Watanabe-sama! What else?”

“Do you have the maps of the city, the airport, and employee lists?”

“I sure do! Downloaded those before we even left Tokyo.”

“Then starting now,” he spoke slowly, “can you tell my son to do his homework, dear.”

That was the code Kente and Missy had developed. For what else was a man with no wife, children, or family in contact to do with small talk but make it into a cipher?

“Yes, Kente-san.” The voice was a recording from a long-forgotten Japanese soap; the modulation and editing were Missy’s.

As Kente walked down the steps, the lines of troops occasionally looked at him but kept their eyes scanning for threats. The troops wore metallic leaf hats that shadowed their stern faces. Kente counted at least 136 and logged them with his “wife” as calories.

These weren’t Saigon’s military police. Each raincoat was marked with the red and yellow cross of the Holy Indochinese Empire. Far from Saigon’s potbelly patrol, these chiseled men were armed with Roman Catholicism, French training, and Portuguese guns to protect the HICE from foreign influence. Kente, with his New York finance blue shirt, suspenders, and tailored blazer slung across his shoulder, was not military and would not pretend to be for their sakes.

The dual lines of troops converged into a single man: Captain Andrew Bui, 3rd Company of the 5th Parachute Brigade. The captain kept his eyes fixed on Kente, but Kente was in no rush to return the glance. Gave him more time to observe. The man waited for Kente to descend the steps and pass the first five guards before walking up to greet him. Two soldiers broke ranks to follow him. A dialogue between pistols and submachine guns could be heard, interspliced with shouts.

“Kente Watanabe?” the commander said in accented Japanese. Kente bowed, the commander saluted, and introduced himself in the sort of Japanese that earned high marks at Lisbon’s Academia Militar, but irritated the ears of natives.

“You can speak Portuguese with me, Captain. I am sure you are better at it.”

The commander tried to hide his surprise with a feigned slight and glare, then obliged.

“Yes, they told me you spent some time in Macau. Very well. I am under orders to escort you out of the airport as soon as it is safe to do so.”

The commander was taller, lighter-skinned—the product of an ex-seminarian groomed for the clergy and a lapse of judgment in Milan. The young captain sported a large mustache and beret. Kente immediately clocked the man’s type. He knew the stink of a foreign-educated local. It was his own scent, after all.

“I was told to expect Saigon’s army, not the Patriarch’s.” Kente refused to move. More gunshots could be heard.

The captain pointed to the barricade of Macanese tanks and machine-gun nests that walled off the runway.

“Over there and overwhelmed. His Holiness has been invited by the magistrate to assist in keeping the peace.” The captain’s right hand was immediately provisioned with a wrapped scroll from the officer to his right and was then dutifully held under Kente’s umbrella like a baton.

“They didn’t teach you about Japanese business manners when handing a document to someone?”

“They did, but your American suit gives me liberty to discard them.”

Kente took the scroll with his free hand, declined gestures to take the umbrella, and with a single motion of his thumb and fingernail opened the red wax seal to unfurl the scroll.

As he skimmed through the various apologies and euphemisms in the document, he caught Captain Bui glaring down at the silver box with headphones clipped to his belt.

“Don’t worry,” the captain said, barely holding the disgust in his eyes. “As the document says, we are still bound by the laws of the treaty port. Now would you follow me, please.”

The captain walked briskly; Kente refused to match his pace, allowing the ring of troops to coalesce around him and force the captain to keep looking back.

They entered the packed airport terminal, the cacophony of a dozen cancelled flights.

“I would not do anything to distress them, Senhor Watanabe,” the captain said, guiding Kente through the crowd as the guards pushed a path. “The airport, like the city itself, has seen better days. We will resolve it quickly, though.”

“No doubt you and your own men have seen a rough day as well.”

“A riot is not a challenge that the Patriarch’s Guard cannot handle, Senhor.”

“Correct me if I’m mistaken, Captain, but doesn’t a company of the Holy Indochinese Army consist of 185 men?”

Captain Bui paused, looking up at his guest again with almost new eyes. “An observant man such as yourself surely knows where not to prod, yes?”

Kente pretended not to notice the glare, adjusting the sleeves on his French cuffs. As the captain pulled an official excuse from his repository: “In any case, more men have been assigned to patrol the airport and for sniper duty. Surely you understand.”

Kente nodded along before turning his attention to the silver box on his belt.

“Missy, send a message to my wife. Tell her that mother needs to be picked up, and to bring an extra coat.”