The Lake Pagoda by Bennett Ann

Author:Bennett, Ann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andaman Press
Published: 2022-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

15

Hanoi, 1945

As she hurried to work in the Mairie the morning after she’d been approached by the man from the Viet Minh at the Tran Quoc pagoda, she couldn’t stop thinking back over the unsettling encounter and reminding herself what it meant for her. It was already terrifying and shaming to have to work for the Japanese officers, but on top of that to be asked to spy on them sent chills down her spine. How would she be able to make copies of secret maps and papers and smuggle them out of the building right under the noses of her Japanese masters? What would happen if she was caught? She suspected that such a crime would warrant a more severe penalty, even than being locked up in the Citadel. The Japanese wouldn’t treat such a betrayal lightly. They would surely torture her to give up the names of her contacts before killing her. Who would take food to Papa at the Citadel then? Who would look after him if he ever got out? It would break his heart to lose her. She couldn’t bear to think about it.

But there was no way out. The Viet Minh had her backed into a corner. ‘We know your secret, Madame Garnier. Your dark secret, and we’re quite sure you wouldn’t want that information to go any further…’ the man had hissed and the hair on the back of her neck had stood on end. She knew exactly what he meant. She’d barely been able lift her eyes to his when he’d said those words, aware that guilt and shame were written all over her face.

For ten years she’d lived with the pain of what she’d done that fateful evening back in 1935. Afterwards, she’d virtually gone to ground, quietly moving in with her father, getting a low-profile administrative job with the French Government. She shook her head as she hurried along the pavement beside the Hoan Kiem Lake towards the Mairie. There was no getting out of this. She would have to do what the man had demanded, and he’d made her promise to meet him again at the pagoda that evening. That meant that she needed to produce some papers straight away.

The Viet Minh agent had solved one problem that had been troubling her, though. She’d told him about the difficulty of having no identity papers, and he’d looked at her and said, ‘We can take care of that for you. What name did you say you were using? I will send you some documents this evening.’ Sure enough, after she and Trang had eaten supper, someone pushed a large brown envelope through the letter box. She ran to the door and looked out, but whoever it had been had already melted back into the humid evening air.

It was a little after eight by the time she arrived at the Mairie that morning. She hadn’t slept well and had found it difficult to get up. The soldier on the door examined the papers she presented to him with a frown, but he handed them back and waved her inside.

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