The Secret Rapture and Other Plays by David Hare

Author:David Hare
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 1997-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Part Two

33. INT. CAR. DAY

Fade-up inside the car. Chesneau’s face as he drives through early-morning Saigon. There is a cigarette hanging from his mouth. The cool morning goes by outside. The image holds. Then after a few seconds …

Barbara (voice over) I used to see Bob whenever it was possible. When we could we met, discreetly, in my room. As time went by it became much harder …

34. EXT. EMBASSY. DAY

The great white bulk of the American Embassy in Saigon, cut out against the morning sky. Palm trees and lawns in front of the huge square building. The gates open, the barrier goes up, Chesneau’s Pinto goes through, with a greeting from the guard.

Barbara (voice over) He could only manage an occasional hour. Anyone who worked in that great white building seemed to vanish inside for the day …

35. INT. EMBASSY LOBBY. DAY

Chesneau crosses the guarded lobby of the Embassy, carrying a briefcase. He makes for the elevator, showing his pass as he goes.

Barbara (voice over) It was a city inside a city. Always, it seemed, with a life of its own.

The elevator doors close.

36. INT. CORRIDOR. DAY

Chesneau walks along the long neon-lit corridor at the spine of CIA headquarters on the fifth floor of the Embassy. A jump in sound: typewriters, telexes, shredders, people calling from room to room.

Barbara (voice over) On the fifth floor of the Embassy, the New Year had begun much as they’d expected. Offensives from the North had started on time …

Lines of doors on either side, through which we see desk workers, strategic analysts. The maps, the desks, the charts, the projections, the files. Piles and piles of paperwork. Everyone is in civilian clothing.

(voice over) The town of Phuoc Binh fell at the beginning of January.

A cry of ‘Hi, Bob’ from one of the doors.

(voice over) But then Ban me Thuot followed early in March.

37. INT. OFFICE. DAY

Chesneau standing with his secretary Linda in the communal secretaries’ office. She is 24, blonde, big-jawed and plaid-skirted, in the Mid-Western way. He is nodding at some papers she is showing him.

Barbara (voice over) Somehow up till then nothing really told them this was going to be the long-awaited end …

Chesneau nods as the Secretary explains a document to him.

(voice over) They’d lived through so many of these annual readjustments, at first they’d just assumed it was another of the same …

38. INT. CORRIDOR. DAY

Chesneau walking on, purposefully, down the corridor towards the far end.

Barbara (voice over) Of course, I suppose if they’d just looked around them, if they’d ever just stopped and thought …

Chesneau reaches the end room. The door is open. Ockham’s office. There are ten people sitting round in the deep-blue carpeted office, with a pine desk where Ockham is. Chesneau stops at the open door.

(voice over) But somehow … all of us … our eye was elsewhere.

Ockham looks up from behind his desk.

(voice over) When we realized, it was too late.

39. INT. OFFICE. DAY

At once we join the scene which has plainly already been long in progress.

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