INGRID DOWS - AN ALTERNATE STORY PART 3 - THE SPACE AGE by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

CHAPTER 4 – THE OLD HOME

 

17:12 (Indochina Time)

Tuesday, December 05, 1950 ‘C’

Tan Son Nhut Airport, Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City after 1976 ‘A’)

Vietnam, French Indochina

 

Poor eight-year-old Hien was both tired and stiff from the long trip in the Air France DC-4 four-engine propeller airliner when she and Ingrid walked out on the tarmac of Tan Son Nhut Airport, the airfield servicing Saigon. Their trip from Paris had taken nearly two days and had necessitated four stops along the way in order to take on fuel and do some routine maintenance. Thankfully, it wasn’t raining when they arrived and the local temperature was a very reasonable 18º Celsius, the month of December being the driest and second-most freshest one in Indochina.

‘’Mommy, I’m so tired!’’

‘’I know, sweetie. Don’t worry: we are going to go to the best hotel in Saigon, where we will be able to have a good night sleep.’’

‘’Could we have taken a faster plane than this one, Ingrid?’’

‘’Unfortunately, no! The fastest airliner today is my AIRBUS 2, but none is in service between Paris and Vietnam. Air France reserves its new AIRBUS 2s for the more prestigious...and more profitable, transatlantic routes. Still, this trip is reminding me that I really should design and build a supersonic airliner, to speed up trans-Pacific air routes.’’

‘’But haven’t you already built a supersonic airplane, Mommy?’’

‘’Er, yes, but my B-12 is a strategic bomber, not an airliner. As for turning it into an airliner, that wouldn’t be so easy: its fuselage is too narrow and too short to make it a commercially profitable airliner. Still, you’re right: the World needs a commercially viable supersonic airliner. I’ll have to add that project to my already long list of to-do jobs.’’

 

Walking with the other 38 passengers of their flight towards the passenger terminal of the airport, Ingrid didn’t miss the fact that two armed French soldiers were standing guard outside of the entrance. Two more soldiers and four policemen were in evidence inside the terminal’s arrival hall, on top of the two French immigration officers manning reception wickets. One wicket was marked as being reserved for French citizens; the second one being reserved for ‘other nationalities’. Ingrid thus took place in the ‘other’ lineup, where only six other persons were waiting to have their passports examined. A person from the 21st Century would probably have wondered about how different from the original history of Vietnam this picture was but there was a good reason for that, as the history of this timeline was already vastly different from that of the history which had originally been known to Nancy Laplante. For one thing, the Japanese soldiers occupying Indochina in 1944, the year when the British had dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan, had never surrendered, with the surviving Japanese soldiers still conducting a low-intensity guerrilla war against the troops sent by France in 1945 to retake its colony. While now mostly out of ammunition, these Japanese were still making a pest of themselves by conducting isolated raids and looting food and supplies from local villagers in order to survive. Those same Japanese soldiers had raided Gia Rai, the village where Hien had been born and where Ingrid’s incarnation as Tran Qui Khiem had lived, killing Hien’s family and many other villagers in the process and burning down the village. Hien had survived that raid only thanks to a neighboring family, the Truongs, who had saved her before fleeing the village, to eventually end up as war refugees in Paris. From what the French military attaché in Washington had told Ingrid, there were still a few hundred Japanese soldiers dispersed in small pockets around French Indochina, surviving as best they could while hiding in the jungle and conducting periodic raids in order to secure food and supplies, stealing from local villagers and killing many of them in the process. The French had been hunting down those surviving Japanese for five years now but were still not in full control of the country. Thankfully, knowing how Ingrid’s trip to Indochina could prove risky due to those marauding Japanese soldiers and also having great admiration for her wartime actions, which in effect had brought on Germany’s defeat, that same military attaché had accepted to deliver to her a concealed firearm carrying permit good for France and its colonies and overseas territories. Armed with that official French permit, Ingrid had thus been able to bring with her two of her pistols, an ultra-compact GLOCK 26 9mm 10-shot pistol, which she presently carried in an ankle holster, and a GLOCK 17L equipped with both a holosight and a laser dot sight, which was carefully packed in one of her suitcases. If that permit was still not enough to assuage some suspicious French official or soldier, she could then show her medal of Knight of the Légion d’Honneur, one of the top French medals, which she had been given by the grateful French government after Germany had signed an armistice in 1944.

 

When her turn at the immigration wicket came, Ingrid presented to the mustached French official her passport and that of Hien while smiling and speaking to him.

‘’Good day, sir! I have with me my adopted daughter Hien, who holds dual American-French nationality. We came so that she could visit her village of birth in the Mekong Delta region.’’

The official nodded his head while taking the two passports and starting to examine them.

‘’Then, I would counsel you to be careful during your trip, miss: Japanese marauders have been quite active lately around the Mekong Delta. I...’’ The Frenchman then stopped talking and snapped his head up to look at Ingrid.

‘’Ingrid Dows? Are you THE General Ingrid Dows who bombed Hitler in Berlin in 1944?’’

‘’Yes, I am that general, but it was one of my bomber pilots who killed Hitler, not me personally.’’

Her response made the official grin, with him then stamping at once both of the passports and handing them back to Ingrid, along with a blue ticket.

‘’France owes you an immense debt of gratitude, General Dows. Still, be careful around the Mekong Delta region.’’

‘’I will be, sir. Thank you very much, sir.’’

Taking back the two passports, a satisfied Ingrid then walked with Hien towards the adjacent baggage arrival hall, where she waited for her two suitcases to be unloaded from her plane. Once she had them, she went to the customs checking counter at the back end of the hall and presented her passports again to a French customs officer. The latter however waived her through at once when he saw the blue ticket sticking out of her passport.

‘’You may pass, miss. Have a nice stay in Saigon, miss.’’

‘’Thank you, sir.’’

Walking out of the passenger terminal, Ingrid and Hien then went to the line of waiting taxis but decided to take instead one of the ‘cyclo’ tricycles also present there and spoke in fluent Vietnamese to its driver, a thin man in his forties.

‘’We are going to the Hotel Majestic, mister.’’

The man, pleased to hear a Caucasian woman

speak Vietnamese fluently, smiled to her in

response and loaded and tied up her two

suitcases into the front rack of his tricycle as she

and Hien took place in the bench seat of the

cyclo trishaw. The driver then started pedaling, inserting his cyclo into the fairly dense traffic of

the only road leading the airport with downtown

Saigon. Ingrid was happy to see how Hien was looking around her with intense interest at her surroundings as they rolled towards the center of the city. She herself was quite happy, this being the first time she was seeing Indochina...since the 18th Century. After some 25 minutes of rolling, the driver stopped his cyclo in front of an imposing building made of white stones and sitting at the corner of two main streets.

‘’The Hotel Majestic, miss.’’

Stepping out of the cyclo and helping Hien come down, she then paid the driver with some of the French Francs she had, leaving him a very good tip and making him bow to her.

‘’The lady is too generous. Thank you very much and have a nice time in Saigon, miss.’’

Ingrid bowed back to the man, then grabbed her two suitcases and walked into the large reception hall of the hotel, where she went with Hien to one of the two receptionists standing behind the reception counter, a young Vietnamese man in his twenties.

‘’Good afternoon, sir: I reserved a room from Paris and my name is Ingrid Dows.’’

‘’One moment please, miss.’’ said the young man before checking a large ledger-like book sitting on the counter.

‘’Ah, yes! You did ask for a suite, right, miss?’’

‘’That’s correct, sir.’’

‘’Then, you have Suite 33, miss. PORTER, PLEASE BRING THE LADY’S LUGGAGE TO SUITE 33!’’

A Vietnamese teenager came forward at once with a baggage cart and loaded Ingrid’s two suitcases and one travel bag on it before leading her and Hien to one of the old-style iron grill elevators at one extremity of the reception hall. Going out on the third floor, the porter unlocked and opened a door with the number 33 on it and let Ingrid and Hien first go in before rolling his cart inside, then taking the suitcases and bag off it.

‘’Here you are, miss.’’

‘’Thank you! Please take this for your services, young man.’’ The young porter smiled on getting the big banknote she handed him and bowed to her.

‘’Thank you very much, miss. Have a good evening, miss.’’ Once the porter was out, Ingrid smiled to little Hien.

‘’We will quickly unpack, then will go have supper in one of the nearby restaurants. Once we will have eaten, we will have a shower and then go to sleep.’’

‘’Please! I am so tired from that long trip.’’

‘’I understand, sweetie.’’

 

Some fifteen minutes later, they went down to the reception hall and walked out, to then follow Catinat Street while looking at the various small restaurants lining the street. Ingrid quickly decided on a small family restaurant specializing in noodle soups and sat with Hien at one of the small tables set on the sidewalk, where she ordered two bowls of noodle soups with seafood. The service was quick, as the soups served were already kept hot in large iron pots at the back of the restaurant. Ingrid closed her eyes with delight as she ate her first spoonful.

‘’This is good! It is exactly like the one Khiem’s wife prepared. Do you like your soup, Hien?’’

‘’Yes! It is indeed very good, Mommy. Uh, what will we do tomorrow?’’

‘’We will find a boat going to Bac Lieu, the provincial capital of the region where the village of Gia Rai is, and book passage on it. Once in Bac Lieu, we will visit the regional archives to see if I can find genealogical records about Gia Rai which could give us the family tree of Tran Qui Khiem. After that, we will take a bus to Gia Rai and visit the house where you were born. Are you anxious to see your old family house?’’

‘’Very much, Mommy, but will it be safe? The French keep talking about marauding Japanese soldiers.’’

‘’Don’t worry, Hien: I will not willfully endanger you if I see that the situation there is too dangerous. However, Japanese soldiers are probably hiding deep in the jungle these days. They would be stupid to try to hold a villa ge when facing French troops.’’

 

Once they had finished eating their soups, Ingrid led Hien back to the Hotel Majestic, where they then took a good shower before undressing and going to bed. Ingrid tenderly kissed Hien on the forehead before going to sleep next to her, being quite tired herself by their long air trip.

‘’Sweet dreams, my little treasure.’’

 

16:28 (Indochina Time)

Wednesday, December 06, 1950 ‘C’

Provincial archives, Bac Lieu, Province of Bac Lieu

Mekong Delta region, French Indochina

 

‘’Here you are, miss: all that we have in terms of genealogical archives for the Gia Rai District.’’

‘’How far back do they go, mister?’’ asked Ingrid to the archives clerk who was now putting down a number of ledgers, some apparently quite old, on the table she was sitting at with Hien.

‘’We have fairly complete archives covering this century and the preceding one, but what we have on the eighteenth Century is a bit fragmentary, miss. Also, the older registers are in Old Vietnamese, not in French. I could help you with your genealogy search if you wish so.’’

‘’Thank you for your offer but no: I can read Old Vietnamese, along with a couple more Asian languages.’’

‘’As you wish, miss. Don’t hesitate to ask if you will need my help.’’

‘’Thank you again, mister: you are most kind and helpful.’’ With the clerk then returning to his reception desk, Ingrid, with a curious Hien sitting next to her, started going through the pile of old ledgers and registries, placing them side-by-side in chronological order on the table. Once that was done, she grabbed the oldest one, which covered the years 1700 to 1800, and cautiously opened the old document, made of parchment rather than paper. Concentrating on the names of the inhabitants of old Gia Rai, Ingrid eagerly looked for members of the Tran family. Her heart jumped in her chest when she found the first entry concerning a Tran.

‘’Here is the name of Khiem’s father, Tran Van Minh... his wife is listed as Hao, as Quiem remembered her. We are on the right trail, Hien. I can also see the names of Khiem’s siblings, with their dates of birth. Let’s see now if we can follow the trail of his descendance.’’

Ingrid, absorbed in her reading, was helped quite a lot by the fact that, despite her young age, Hien stayed quiet all along and didn’t distract her with questions. A couple of minutes later, Ingrid was rewarded with the finding of more relevant names.

‘’There are the names of Khiem’s wife and children!’’

As she went through the old registry, Ingrid took copious notes, to make sure that this precious information would not be lost in the future. Sadly, many of the members of the Tran family line died before being able to found a family of their own, either due to diseases, famine or wars, while the women in the bloodline lost their family name on marrying. On the other hand, that simplified her search, as it cut the number of family links she had to track. Other members of the Tran line also moved out of the Gia Rai District at some time, thus disappearing from the registry.

 

After over an hour of meticulous research, Ingrid got close to the time period for the parents of Hien. Gently waking up her adopted daughter, Ingrid then showed her a group of names from the year 1942.

‘’Hien, do these names ring a bell to you?’’

Hien, by now half asleep, suddenly became agitated after reading the names in question.

‘’THEY ARE MY PARENTS AND MY OLDER BROTHER, ALONG WITH MY NAME! YOU FOUND MY FAMILY, INGRID!’’ Joy filled Ingrid as she tenderly hugged the little girl against her.

‘’Hien, you are a direct descendant of Tran Qui Khiem, to the ninth generation. My instinct when I saw you in Paris was correct. I am so happy about this.’’

‘’Me too, Ingrid. Destiny put us together.’’

‘’Destiny...or something else.’’ replied Ingrid in a speculative tone of voice. ‘’Let me finish to note all this down, then we will go have supper. It is now too late to go to Gia Rai, as darkness will fall in a few hours: some Japanese marauders are known to be hiding in this region. It will be safer for us to leave for Gia Rai in the morning.’’

07:53 (Indochina Time)

 

Thursday, December 07, 1950 ‘C’

Bus station, Bac Lieu

 

When Ingrid showed up with Hien at the Bac Lieu bus station in the morning, with plans to take a bus going to Gia Rai, Ho Phong and Ca Mau, they found another eleven persons waiting to board that bus, with the driver collecting the fare for the trip in exchange for a ticket. There was also a French soldier nearby, who went to Ingrid when he saw her approach the bus.

‘’Excuse me, miss, where are you headed? Ca Mau?’’

‘’No! We are going to Gia Rai, Corporal. Why do you ask?’’

‘’Because things are a bit dicey at present around Gia Rai, miss. Some Japanese soldiers attacked a house in the village yesterday and killed its occupants after stealing the foodstuff they could find there. One of our units is presently sweeping the area to try to find out those Japanese but the village is not fully secured right now.’’ Ingrid would normally have thanked the soldier for warning her, except for the fact that he had only warned the single Caucasian person wanting to board the bus, while ignoring the eleven Vietnamese in the lineup. She still kept a polite tone while replying to him.

‘’I appreciate the warning, Corporal, but I will go on to Gia Rai: I have some family business to take care of there.’’

‘’Family business, miss?’’

‘’Yes! My adopted daughter is from Gia Rai and we are going to visit her old family home.’’

The soldier looked down at Hien, who was holding Ingrid’s hand, then nodded his head.

‘’Very well, miss, but be careful.’’

‘’I will, Corporal.’’ simply said Ingrid before stepping forward to pay for a pair of ticket and then boarding the bus with Hien. Putting her big backpack in the baggage rack above one of the rearmost bench seats of the old vehicle, Ingrid then made Hien sit down next to the window, so that she could see as much of her native country as she could during the trip, then sat next to her.

‘’Excited, Hien?’’

‘’Yes, Mommy! However, I left Gia Rai when I was still a baby and I don’t have any recollections of what the village was like.’’

‘’Well, I do have some memories of it but those are probably completely outdated by now. In my time, Gia Rai had at most a few hundred inhabitants, most of them simple farmers. Now, it has some 15,000 inhabitants, at last count.’’

‘’Do you think that we will be able to find my old family home, Mommy?’’

‘’I unfortunately don’t think so, Hien: your first adoptive family told me that they saw the Japanese put fire to your house, along with the rest of the village, as they were fleeing to safety with you. Something was probably built in its place later. What I really hope to see is the spot where Khiem’s house had been.’’ Ingrid then fell silent as the bus started to roll out of the bus station, taking the national road leading westward towards Gia Rai and Ca Mau.

 

The bus, apart from being an old one, also had to use a poorly maintained road full of potholes, thus could only go at a fairly low speed. That only supported what Ingrid thought about the French occupation of Indochina, with minimal investments made by Paris while it exploited the country to the maximum. However, the French government was far from the only one to do this: the British were equally selective about their priorities inside India and in their other colonies, while the situation in the Belgian Congo could only be described as ‘systematic exploitation and local enslavement’. Ingrid firmly believed that it was high time for European colonialism to be swept away. Unfortunately, the United States also tended to exploit other countries, albeit in a less organized, more corporative fashion, with companies like the American Fruit Company shamelessly exploiting South and Central American local farmers. At least in that case, Ingrid could console herself with the fact that she had dissuaded President Dewey from naming the Dulles brothers, who held shares in the American Fruit Company, to cabinet posts.

 

The bus had rolled past the town of Hoa Binh, a district capital of the Bac Lieu Province, and was now rolling past dense jungles on both sides of the road when a dozen or so shots were heard ahead, some distance away. The bus driver immediately braked to a halt on the roadside, now uncertain what to do. Ingrid gently patted Hien’s arm as she got up from her seat.

‘’Stay here and stay low, Hien. I am going to see what is going on.’’

Proceeding forward along the narrow aisle of the bus, Ingrid went to see the obviously nervous driver and spoke to him in Vietnamese.

‘’How far are we from Gia Rai, mister?’’

‘’Uh, about ten or twelve kilometers, miss, but I don’t know if we should continue or turn around and return to Bac Lieu.’’

‘’Are attacks by Japanese marauders frequent in this region, mister?’’

‘’There is an average of one or two such attacks a week around here, miss, mostly against isolated farms. There was however one recent ambush against a truck going along this route, miss.’’

Ingrid, like the driver, then listened on for a minute while the bus was still stopped alongside the road. She then patted the driver’s shoulder to reassure him.

‘’Nothing now. A French Army patrol may have encountered and engaged a group of Japanese marauders in the jungle. I am going to go get a pistol I have inside my backpack, then will come back to defend you if needed. In the meantime, continue with caution.’’

‘’Yes, miss!’’

Ingrid then returned to her bench seat and smiled to Hien.

‘’I am going to get my pistol from my backpack, then will go sit next to the driver, to protect him in case of an attack. I want you to stay low in your seat, sweetie. If you hear gunshots, then get down on the floor and hide under your seat. Understood?’’

‘’Yes, Mommy!’’

With Hien now keeping her head below the sill of her window, Ingrid took her big backpack from the overhead rack and opened it,

extracting her gun belt from it and then buckling up the

belt around her waist and fixing to her right upper leg

the strap of the holster containing her Glock 17L 9mm pistol, which was loaded with a 20-shot extra-long

magazine. She then closed back her backpack and

was in the process of putting it back in the overhead

luggage rack when the bus braked to a stop, prompting Ingrid in hurrying back towards the driver. She was still a few meters from him when a bullet pierced the windshield and struck the driver in the head, killing him at the same time a rifle shot was heard. Ingrid immediately crouched down in the aisle and shouted at Hien while taking out her pistol.

‘’HIEN, GET DOWN UNDER YOUR SEAT, NOW!’’

As the other passengers panicked, many of them screaming with fear, Ingrid briefly raised her head just enough to see what was ahead of the bus. What she saw was what looked like a linemen’s truck, a vehicle designed to lay and repair telephone lines, plus an old jeep. Four bodies lay around the two vehicles, inert. Ingrid hurriedly lowered her head when she perceived some movement from the corner of her right eye. Seconds later, the right-side door of the bus was forced open and a dirty, disheveled man carrying a long rifle with bayonet fixed to it climbed aboard the bus. The man wore what appeared to be a Japanese Army uniform reduced to near rags and had an unkempt long beard. The man first checked out the driver, slumped in his seat, then turned to look down the aisle of the bus. That was when Ingrid, using her laser dot sight unit fixed to her pistol, shot him in the throat. The Japanese crumpled down at once, dead before he even hit the floor. Ingrid then saw the tip of another rifle with bayonet fixed to it appear from behind the low partition next to the bus door. She thus pointed her pistol at that partition, ready to shoot at any other Japanese soldier who would show himself. One Japanese then sneaked a quick look over the edge of the partition, to locate the shooter who had killed his comrade. That peep was rewarded by a bullet which pierced the partition before hitting the Japanese in his left eye. Wanting to exploit to the maximum the effect of surprise, Ingrid then ran to the front of the bus and pointed her pistol towards the open door, where the dead second Japanese was tumbling out of the bus. She then caught a third Japanese, who was looking with disbelief and horror at his comrade falling out of the bus. That third Japanese then looked up at Ingrid while pointing his rifle at her, only to get shot twice in the chest before he could fire his weapon. Deciding that she had to take some extra risks in order to keep the initiative, Ingrid then jumped over the bodies of the two dead Japanese lying inside or partly in the bus, landing next to the third Japanese she had killed. She immediately assumed a crouched stance while sweeping visually her surroundings, her pistol at the ready. To her relief, she saw no other Japanese in sight. This must have been some kind of ambush party sent forward to block or delay any French reaction forces sent from Bac Lieu. Still, she ran quickly inside the nearby jungle in order not to constitute a clear target to any Japanese who could still be hidden from sight. That move most probably saved her life, as a shot rang out and she heard and felt a bullet zip by her head, missing her by mere centimeters. With her reflexes and instincts reverting to the time in 1941 when she was fighting the Japanese in the jungles of the Bataan Peninsula, in the Philippines, she ran further inside the jungle as two more bullets chased after her. Going down on her belly once behind the cover of a big tree, she then started crawling in the direction from which the shots had come, somewhere along the jungle’s edge next to the right side of the road. A short burst of automatic fire, probably from a submachine gun, judging by its noise, swept over her head, making her lower herself even more and slowing her crawl in order to be quieter. The meager fire directed at her to date could mean that her opponents were trying to save on their ammunition, something that would correspond to what she had been told about the ragtag state of the Japanese soldiers still roaming the jungles of Indochina. In normal wartime, she would have expected near continuous fire from the enemy, especially while they were trying to flush her out of the jungle cover. A short order in Japanese then rang out just before a second submachine gun burst passed overhead. That helped her further adjust her direction of advance and, crawling more slowly and covertly than ever, stopped some ten seconds later, when three pairs of legs appeared through the foliage. With a mean smile appearing on her face, she switched back on her laser dot sight, then aimed her pistol and fired three shots aimed at the groins of the Japanese facing her. All three went down with screams of intense pain, with Ingrid then firing six more shots, finishing off the badly wounded Japanese. She waited a good twenty seconds after that, listening and watching for any sign of a surviving Japanese, before cautiously getting back on her feet, her pistol at the ready, and approaching the dead soldiers. One of them had been armed with a long Arisaka rifle, like the three Japanese who had attacked the bus, while one man had a French-made MAT-49 9mm submachine gun, a weapon probably taken from a dead French soldier. The third man wore the rank insignias of a lieutenant and had been armed with a revolver, another French-made weapon probably taken from a dead Frenchman, plus had a Katana sword of low quality, of the kind widely distributed to junior officers of the Japanese Imperial Army. Ingrid took the time to collect the weapons and the spare ammunition she found on the dead men before returning to the bus. Once on the road, she was able to see that one of the passengers, a young man in his early twenties, had actually grabbed one of the three rifles dropped by the assailants of the bus and was now by the side of the bus, partly hidden by the door.

‘At least someone else on the bus had the courage and presence of mind of grabbing one of those weapons.’ she thought to herself while approaching the young Vietnamese man while carrying the captured weapons and ammunition. She smiled to him once near him and put down her load while speaking to him in Vietnamese.

‘’Congratulations for jumping in to defend the bus, mister. Could you have all those weapons and ammunition brought inside the bus, while I go check out those four bodies lying next to the truck and jeep?’’

‘’Sure, miss! Uh, are you French?’’

‘’Me? No: I’m an American.’’

‘’An American? And where did you learn to fight like this?’’

‘’In the jungles of the Philippines in 1941, while fighting the Japanese there. Look, I am ready to tell you more about me once we will be ready to roll again towards Gia Rai. Get someone to help you load those weapons and ammunition and also to take out our poor driver from his seat, so that someone could drive the bus.’’

‘’I will do that, miss.’’ said the young man, nodding his head, before starting to collect the weapons and ammunition from the three Japanese first shot by Ingrid.

 

As the young man enlisted the help of two other male passengers, Ingrid walked to the four bodies lying in or beside the linemen’s truck and the jeep. The two men by the jeep wore the uniforms of local Vietnamese policemen, while the two dead next to the linemen’s truck wore work coveralls. Nearby was a telephone pole from which a cut line lay next to it. The weapons which had belonged to the policemen were nowhere to be seen, making Ingrid understand what had probably happened.

‘Those Japanese probably cut the telephone line, then waited in ambush for a repair truck to show up. While a police jeep did escort that truck, it was probably taken by surprise, without a real chance to react.’

Saluting first the four dead Vietnamese men, Ingrid then dragged their bodies off the road, so that passing vehicles would not squash them. On inspecting the police jeep, she found that the radio set in its back was still functional, so she grabbed its handset and spoke in it in Vietnamese.

‘’To anyone listening on this frequency, this is a call for urgent assistance from a police jeep that was ambushed some ten kilometers east of Gia Rai, along National Road One. I am a passenger from a passing bus which encountered this jeep and a linemen’s truck, along with the bodies of two policemen and two linemen. I request urgent assistance, over.’’

She had to repeat her message another time before a male voice answered her.

‘’Unknown callsign, this is the Bac Lieu central police station. Could you tell me the plate number of the jeep you are calling from, over?’’

‘’Wait one, Bac Lieu!’’ answered Ingrid before quickly going to read the rear registration plate of the jeep and then returning to the radio set.

‘’Bac Lieu, the jeep’ plate is ‘249 H36’, over.’’

There was a momentary pause before her interlocutor spoke again.

‘’Jeep H36, describe your present situation, over.’’

‘’Bac Lieu, I am one of the thirteen passengers of the Bac Lieu to Ca Mau bus which left the Bac Lieu bus station this morning at eight. We encountered a linemen’s truck and this jeep stopped some ten or twelve kilometers east of Gia Rai, but were then shot at by Japanese soldiers manning an ambush position along National Road One. The bus driver was killed and three Japanese soldiers then tried to board our bus. Fortunately, I had a pistol with me and was able to kill those Japanese. Unfortunately, both the linemen and your two policemen were already dead. Could you send a strong patrol to my position, please?’’

‘’Will do, Jeep H36. In the meantime, hang on and stay put, over.’’

‘’Understood, Bac Lieu. Out!’’

Leaving the radio on, in case of a call from Bac Lieu, Ingrid hurried to the bus, where the last of the Japanese weapons were being loaded and put in one of the overhead luggage racks, and spoke to the young man guarding the door of the bus.

‘’I was able to call Bac Lieu with the radio I found in that police jeep. They are going to send a strong patrol to us and asked that we stay put right here. Let me just go reassure my little daughter, then we will be able to talk more.’’

‘’Go ahead, miss: I will warn you if I see any other Japanese soldiers approaching us.’’

‘’Thanks! You are a brave young man indeed.’’

‘’That is nothing compared to what you just did, miss.’’

Ingrid smiled at the young man, nearly a teenager, before boarding the bus and going to see Hien, who was anxiously waiting while sitting on her bench seat. The little girl hugged her at once when she got near her.

‘’Ingrid, I was so afraid for you!’’

‘’Don’t worry anymore, sweetie: all those Japanese are now dead and Bac Lieu is going to send a rescue force to us.’’

‘’Great! Uh, could I go out for a minute, Mommy? All that stress made me want to urinate.’’

‘’That’s understandable, Hien. I will escort you to the jungle’s edge, where you will be able to relieve yourself in some intimacy.’’

 

Taking Hien’s left hand, Ingrid then led her out of the bus, then walked to the jungle’s edge, penetrating it by about three meters before stopping.

‘’Here should be okay, Hien. Just crouch and sit against that tree while I screen you from the bus.’’

‘’Thanks, Mommy!’’

Once Hien was finished, Ingrid escorted her back to the bus but stayed with her just outside the vehicle’s front right door, next to the young man still holding an Arisaka rifle. The latter smiled down at Hien before looking at Ingrid.

‘’She is your daughter, miss?’’

‘’My adopted daughter, actually. She was born in Gia Rai, but her family was killed in 1942 by a band of Japanese soldiers. A neighbors ’ family was able to save her and then took refuge in France with her. I first met her in Paris and immediately fell in love with her. We were going to Gia Rai today so that she could see her place of birth.’’

‘’A touching story indeed, miss. You are as caring as you are brave, I must say. Uh, I didn’t know that the American Army employed women.’’

‘’In 1941, it didn’t, mister, except as nurses. However, it changed its policy in 1942, in view of how desperate the situation was in the Pacific.’’

‘’And you were what, a nurse? A clerk, or a radio operator?’’

‘’Hell no! I was a fighter pilot. My name is Ingrid Dows, also known as ‘Lady Hawk’, at your service.’’

The young man’s mouth opened wide at those words.

‘’THE Lady Hawk?’’

‘’I don’t know of any other Lady Hawk, mister. Was I well known around Indochina?’’

‘’Oh yes, miss! The Japanese tried to block or censure the news coming from other places but clandestine radios often talked about your war exploits. Is it true that you actually killed the Japanese High Command by bombing Tok yo in 1944?’’

‘’That’s true, mister. However I had my bomber pilots to assist me then. Well, would you mind guarding my daughter for a couple of minutes, while I go drag the bodies of the Japanese I killed out of the jungle?’’

‘’No problem, miss.’’

‘’Hien, stay with this young man, while I go get those dead Japanese.’’

‘’Yes, Mommy!’’

 

Going to where the last three Japanese she had killed lay, she then dragged them out of the jungle and lined them up by the right side of the road. Returning to the bus and Hien afterwards, she smiled to the young Vietnamese man.

‘’And you, mister? What is your line of work these days?’’

‘’Me? I study journalism. I was on my way to visit my parents in Ca Mau. My name is Pham Van Bao.’’

‘’Pleased to know you, Bao.’’ said Ingrid while shaking hands again with the man. ‘’Well, let’s get comfortable while waiting for that rescue force.’’ She then went inside with Hien and made her lay down on the bench seat they had used.

‘’Rest here for the moment, sweetie: I am going to help that young man guard the bus while waiting for the rescue patrol from Bac Lieu.’’

With Hien obeying her without discussion, she then returned to the bus’s door and sat on the entrance steps, near the student. The latter, obviously in awe of her, widely smiled to Ingrid.

‘’Could you tell me about your fighting against the Japanese during the war, miss?’’

‘’I will, but remember that I commanded an all-female air combat unit: my successes were mostly due to the bravery and skills of those aviatrixes. Now, I own and direct the Hughes Aircraft Company, with many of those brave women now working as part of that company and of the Air Fifinella airline, which is also part of the Hughes Enterprises conglomerate.’’

 

She then spent the next forty minutes telling the young man about her war stories and answering his questions, until a small column of four vehicles approached from the direction of Gia Rai. A jeep armed with a medium machine gun led a M8 armored car and two 2½-ton trucks full of French soldiers. Getting up from the bus’s step she was sitting on, Ingrid calmly walked to the front of the bus and waved at the incoming French soldiers, who appeared nervous and on edge. The jeep and three other vehicles stopped near the bus, with Ingrid going to see the French Army lieutenant sitting in the front passenger seat of the jeep as about thirty soldiers jumped out of the two trucks. The French officer, a man in his mid twenties, watched her approach with some misgivings visible on his face.

‘’You’re the one who called the Bac Lieu police station, miss?’’

‘’Yes! I was expecting help to arrive from Bac Lieu instead of from Gia Rai. How come?’’

‘’Bac Lieu called my unit, which was doing a sweep around Gia Rai to find the Japanese who had a ttacked the town. Who killed those six Japanese?’’

‘’I did! I had a pistol with me and was able to shoot the Japanese who boarded the bus after killing its driver. Getting fire from a part of the jungle, I then went into the jungle to find and kill thr ee more Japanese.’’

‘’You, killing six Japanese?’’ said the officer in a skeptical tone which fired up Ingrid.

‘’Yes, me! Those were also not the first Japanese I have killed, either in the air or on the ground, during World War 2. I am Lieutenant-General Ingrid Dows, of the United States Air Force, also known as ‘Lady Hawk’. Now, could you tell me what is the present situation in and around Gia Rai, Lieutenant?’’ replied Ingrid, putting an emphasis on the word ‘Lieutenant’. The Frenchman was left stunned for a moment, then grabbed control of himself and saluted her, with Ingrid saluting back, then got out of his jeep to face her.

‘’Uh, sorry about my tone, General. I must say that your presence in Indochina is a bit of a surprise to me. Why were you traveling to Gia Rai, which is a rather obscure town in a country still at war with the Japanese?’’

‘’The reason is simple enough, Lieutenant: I adopted a few years ago a small Vietnamese orphan girl who was born in Gia Rai and I came to Vietnam to show her her place of birth. Now, how are things in Gia Rai? Is it safe to visit right now?’’ The French officer noticed her use of the name ‘Vietnam’ instead of ‘Indochina’, the name commonly used for the country by the French government, but didn’t remark on that.

‘’I believe that it is now fairly safe, General. We have a company of troops presently sweeping the jungles around the town in search for the Japanese soldiers who attacked it. It seems that you found some of those Japanese before we could, General.’’

‘’Those bastards got what they deserved. What about the casualties and damage they caused in Gia Rai?’’

‘’Unfortunately, while the group of Japanese which attacked the town was fairly small, they had time to kill over a dozen people and to loot and burn down a small store and two houses before disappearing in the jungle. These Japanese soldiers you killed actually represent about a third of the force which attacked Gia Rai. However, we have up to now killed four Japanese and are hunting down t he rest of that group.’’

‘’Good! Sadly, those six Japanese I killed had time to ambush a line repair truck and a police escort jeep before killing my bus driver. I piled up their weapons and ammunition in one of the overhead racks of the bus. The young man standing next to the door of the bus then helped me by taking one of the Arisaka rifles dropped by a Japanese and helping me to guard the bus.’’

Ingrid then twisted her head around to shout at the student in Vietnamese.

‘’BAO, YOU CAN PUT DOWN YOUR RIFLE THE OTHER CAPTURED JAPANESE WEAPONS!’’

‘’You can speak Vietnamese, miss?’’ asked the surprised French junior officer.

‘’Yes, I can, along with a few other languages. Now, can I leave for Gia Rai with that bus, Lieutenant? I am able to drive it.’’

‘’Uh, I’m sorry to ask this, General, but could you prove your identity to me first?’’

‘’Certainly! Here is my passport, along with the weapon carrying permit delivered to me by the French embassy in Washington.’’

The Frenchman took her two documents and examined them briefly before returning them to her and saluting her.

‘’You may continue your trip to Gia Rai, General. The staff of the bus station there has returned to their posts, now that we control the town again.’’

‘’Thank you, Lieutenant!’’ replied Ingrid, saluting back before turning around to return to the bus. There, she enlisted Bao’s help to take the driver’s body out of the vehicle and to roll him in a blanket before stuffing him in one of the underside baggage bins of the vehicle. She had to wipe away the blood that had stained the driver’s seat before taking place behind the steering wheel and starting the engine. The French lieutenant, along with one of his senior NCOs, watched the bus roll away towards Gia Rai.

‘’The famous Lady Hawk, here in Indochina. She appeared even younger than what she was said to be, I must say.’’

‘’She’s also one hell of a nice-looking girl, sir.’’ added the NCO.

It took Ingrid only twenty minutes to arrive in Gia Rai, with young Bao indicating to her where the town’s bus station was. When she stopped her bus in front of the small wooden building, a solitary Vietnamese employee ran to it and eyed with dismay the bullet hole visible in the windshield before entering the bus, looking with surprise at Ingrid and asking her a question in French.

‘’Where is our driver, Minh, miss?’’

‘’He’s dead, mister.’’ She answered in Vietnamese. ‘’Japanese marauders ambushed our bus some ten kilometers to the East and killed him. I however was able to shoot back at th em and to kill them. Minh’s body is in one of the right-side underside storage compartments, wrapped in a blanket. Do you have someone else here able to help you take out his body?’’

‘’Uh, I’m still alone here, miss.’’

‘’Then I will help you do that. Bao, could you help me with that?’’

‘’Of course, miss!’’ replied at once the student. The three of them then went to the underside bin and respectfully pulled out the body of the poor driver, to lay him along a side wall of the bus station. The Vietnamese station attendant looked down with sadness at the dead driver.

‘’Poor Minh! He will leave behind a widow and four kids.’’

‘’Could I ask you for the home address, full name and telephone number of your driver, mister? I would like to pay a visit to his family later.’’

‘’I certainly can do that, miss. Just give me a minute.’’

As promised, the station attendant came back to her two minutes later and handed her a small piece of paper folded in two.

‘’Here you are, miss. Minh was from Bac Lieu. May I ask your name, so that I could notify my company of who saved our bus today?’’

‘’I am Ingrid Dows, an American citizen. I will be in Gia Rai for one or two days, then will return to Saigon. Do you sell maps of Gia Rai here at this station?’’

‘’I can give you a spare map I have in my office, miss.’’

The man again went inside the station, to reemerge with a folded map of the kind sold in gas stations.

‘’Here is your map, miss. No need to pay for it: you already did a lot for my company today.’’

‘’Thank you very much, mister. Do you have another bus driver available here or will you need to call for one from another town?’’

‘’I will have to call for a new driver from our main station in Bac Lieu, miss. Hopefully, he should be here by this afternoon. ’’

‘’Which leaves the other passengers of the bus high and dry here for at the least a few hours.’’

Ingrid then turned to face Bao and took out of her fanny pack her wallet, extracting a few French Francs from it and giving them to the young man.

‘’Bao, since you will be stuck here with the other passengers until this afternoon, could I ask you to go buy lunch for you and them with this money?’’ The student looked down with some disbelief at the money he now had in one hand, then grinned to Ingrid.

‘’Miss, you are as generous as you are brave. Are you sure that you can afford to give all this?’’

‘’Bao, I am one of the three co-owners of Hughes Enterprises and I am a multi-billionaire...in American dollars. Of course I can afford to give this away! ’’

‘’You, a multi-billionaire woman? That is pretty much unheard of.’’

‘’Oh, the World better be ready to hear a lot more about me, Bao.’’ she replied with malice. ‘’Now, go split that money with the other passengers: I am sure that you will be honest about this.’’

‘’I would be a truly despicable one to steal from others at such a moment, Ingrid.’’ Ingrid then bowed to both Bao and to the station attendant before going with Hien to a nearby parking stand, where she took place in a cyclo driven by a man in his early thirties.

‘’To the Ward One, on Ta Tai Loi, please!’’

‘’Right away, miss.’’

As the driver of the cyclo started pedaling at a good speed, Ingrid gently patted Hien’s right forearm.

‘’You will soon see the place where you were born, Hien.’’

‘’But, the Truongs told me that the Japanese had burned down my family house, along with many other houses. How are we going to know where it once stood, Mommy?’’

‘’I spoke at length with your former adoptive parents, Hien, and they gave me a good description of where they and the Tran family lived on Ta Tai Loi street, in Ward One of Gia Rai. We will find the correct place, Hien.’’

After pedaling for about 300 meters, the cyclo driver turned right on Ta Tai Loi, a rather narrow street bordered by modest houses made of wood. The houses seemed to be of fairly recent construction, so she asked a question to her driver.

‘’I was told that this district was burned down in 1942 by the Japanese, yet these houses all look to be at most a few years old. How come?’’

‘’That’s because people returned here two to three years after the Japanese raid and rebuilt their homes. Since the parcels of land around here are quite fertile, that sped up the repopulating of the town.’’

‘’I was also told that there had been a small chapel near the native home of my adopted daughter, mister. Do you know if it is still standing?’’

‘’The original chapel was also burned down by the Japanese, miss. However, a new one was built on top of its ruins some six years ago.’’

‘’Then, drive us to it, please.’’

‘’With pleasure, miss. It is about 400 meters from here. A small cemetery was also established besides it, where the tombs of those killed by the Japanese are.’’ That prompted Ingrid in gently pressing Hien against her while speaking softly to her.

‘’You may soon be able to go pray over the grave of your family, Hien, while also seeing where the Tran’s home was.’’

‘’Thank you, Mommy, for making this possible for me.’’ said Hien, as a few tears came to her eyes.

 

They finally arrived in front of a small Christian chapel made of bricks and surrounded by only a handful of wooden buildings, all looking fairly new. Emotions grew within Ingrid when she was able to recognize the surroundings of her old house as Tran Qui Khiem: the paucity of buildings around the chapel helped her compare the actual panorama with that she had seen some 200 years ago. She then asked another question to the driver of their cyclo.

‘’This corner of Gia Rai was known to have some very fertile lands, mister. How come there are so few houses around this chapel?’’

‘’Because, sadly, most of the inhabitants of this part of Gia Rai were massacred by the Japanese in 1942, so few of the people living here then were left to come back and rebuild their lives after the return of the French. Unfortunately, the fears caused by the continued threat from Japanese marauders have dissuaded most potential investors and farmers from returning.’’

‘’What about that big field just West and North of this chapel? It is still empty of houses.’’

‘’The people of Gia Rai are mostly poor people who barely had enough money to rebuild their own homes. As for the French, the Japanese threat is keeping them away.’’ Those words then made an idea pop into Ingrid’s brain.

‘’And if I would wish to buy that lot of land, where should I go to arrange that?’’

‘’The municipal council’s building is near the bus station, miss. You could arrange the buying of this lot with our municipal property manager.’’

‘’Thank you for your information, mister: you were quite helpful.’’ Ingrid helped Hien jump out of the cyclo, then paid the driver, leaving him a big tip as an extra. Once the cyclo was gone, Ingrid led Hien to the small cemetery visible behind the chapel, which counted over sixty tombs, most of them dedicated to whole families. Slowing going down each row of tombs while looking at the names on the stones, the duo finally stopped in front of a modest headstone bearing the names of six people. Reading their names brought fresh tears to Hien.

‘’My family... It is buried here. The worst part is that I can’t even remember their faces: I was only five months-old when the Japanese came and killed them. Could we go buy flowers, so that we could then decorate their tomb, Mommy?’’

‘’We certainly will do that today, Hien. Let me check out the oldest tombs here first.’’

 

Going to the two last rows of tombstones, which looked distinctly older than the others, Ingrid slowly reviewed the names engraved on them. She knew that, in the 18 th Century, most of the people in Gia Rai were too poor to afford headstones and could only pay for wooden grave markers. However, Khiem had been a prosperous farmer in his time and she expected him to have been interred in a plot marked by a headstone. Near the end of the last row, she stopped in front of a fairly large headstone of ancient manufacture and read aloud the names and years engraved on it, translating the dates, which had been done according to the ancient, non-Christian calendar used in the Mekong region in the 18th Century, into the modern calendar.

‘’Tran Qui Khiem, born in 1721 and died 1786; his wife Chau; his two sons Duong and Hung; his three daughters Diem, Hao and Kieu and his grandsons Liem and Minh. I also see more names, probably those of the families of Liem and Minh, who married after Khiem’s death. I wish that I could have known them.’’

Her mind now filled with a deluge of ancient souvenirs, Ingrid crouched next to the headstone and gently caressed it, her eyes closed. Hien watched her but didn’t talk then, not wanting to disturb her in such an intimate moment.

 

When Ingrid finally got back up and turned around to leave the cemetery with Hien, she saw a bearded European man in his forties who was looking at her while standing next to the chapel. Since he wore the robe of a Catholic priest, she deduced that he must have been the local preacher, so she walked to him, stopping one pace from him and offering her hand for a shake.

‘’Good day, Father. My name is Ingrid Dows and I am an American visiting Gia Rai with my adopted daughter Hien. Her family is buried here.’’

‘’And I am Father Cyprien, Miss Dows. Bringing your adopted daughter here, so that she could visit her family’s tomb, was a most kind gesture.’’

‘’And I would like to complete that gesture by buying flowers and putting them on their grave. Do you know where I could go buy flowers?’’

‘’There are a couple of shops where you could find fresh flowers in Gia Rai, notably near the town’s bus station.’’

‘’Then I will go visit those shops. I have another question for you, Father Cyprien: that lot of land next to your chapel is quite fertile, yet is still vacant. I was told that potential buyers were deterred by the continuous threat from Japanese marauders but I would still like to buy it in the name of my daughter Hien. Do you have an idea of who it belongs to and what price it is evaluated?’’

‘’The municipality officially owns the vacant lots around here but has been unable up to now to find buyers from them. That has deflated quite a lot the values of those lots, so you should be able to buy the whole lot adjacent to my chapel and its cemetery for a few thousand Francs...if you don’t hit a particularly greedy or corrupt official, who could ask for an ‘extra’ in order to enrich himself. Unfortunately, official bribery and corruption is still nearly a tradition in this region.’’

‘’Don’t I know that! Very well, I will go visit the municipal authorities after lunch. Thank you for your information, Father Cyprien.’’

‘’You’re welcome, Miss Dows. Have a good day, you and your daughter.’’ On that, Ingrid walked away with Hien, heading back to the downtown area and its bus station.

They had time to buy flowers and return to the cemetery in order to lay those flowers on both Hien’s family grave and on Khiem’s family grave before returning by cyclo to the downtown area, where Ingrid and Hien went to the municipal authorities’ building, built of white stones. There, Ingrid presented herself to a young female receptionist cum telephone operator, using Vietnamese.

‘’Good day, miss! I would like to speak with the property manager: I wish to buy a lot of land in Ward One.’’

‘’I will advise Mister Nguyen right away, miss.’’

The receptionist then used her telephone to call someone, after which she smiled back to Ingrid.

‘’Mister Nguyen will receive you now, miss. His office is the third one on the right, down this hallway.’’

‘’Thank you, miss! Come, Hien!’’

Going to the door of the said office, Ingrid knocked on it, getting a nearly immediate answer.

‘’Come in!’’

Opening the door and walking in with Hien, Ingrid found herself looking at a small man in his fifties with mostly unremarkable traits. The municipal property manager then walked to her and shook hands with her.

‘’Welcome to Gia Rai, Miss Dows. I am told that you would like to buy a lot of land here, in our Ward One. Which one exactly are you interested in?’’

‘’Well, I was hoping to find a detailed map of the available lots here, so that I could identify the precise lot which interests me. It is sitting next to the chapel and cemetery in Ward One.’’

‘’I see which one you are talking about, miss. It is indeed a fertile lot of land. Unfortunately, it is situated on a border of our municipality nearest to the patches of jungle from where most of the Japanese attacks have come during the past five years. Most people are afraid of rebuilding there due to that continued threat. I must honestly warn you about that before you would buy one of those lots.’’

‘An honest government functionary here, in South-East Asia. Wow!’ thought Ingrid to herself before nodding her head once.

‘’I still would like to buy that lot, Mister Nguyen. Can you show me a map of the numbered lots still available for buying in that area?’’

‘’Of course! Please come examine my wall map of the marked properties in Gia Rai. The lot you are interested in is this one, next to the Ward One chapel and cemetery, correct?’’

‘’Correct!’’ replied Ingrid after a look at that said wall map. ‘’It looks to cover about five hectares of land, forming a ‘L’ around the chapel and cemetery.’’

‘’You have a good eye for map distances, miss. That lot indeed covers an official surface of 5.4 hectares adjacent to the chapel. May I ask why you are especially interested in that lot, miss?’’

‘’You may, Mister Nguyen. The family of my adopted daughter Hien was killed by Japanese soldiers in 1942 but her neighbors managed to save her before emigrating to France, where I met Hien and fell in love with her. Her family house was on the lot next to the chapel and I wish to be able to buy it in order to build a new house on it as a legacy to her family.’’

‘’That is a most respectable wish, miss. Now, let me check the official value of that lot. It won’t be long.’’

The man fetched a big ledger-like book and sifted through it until he stopped on a particular page accompanied with a small map and pointed at a number.

‘’The lot number 336 in Ward One, the one which interests you, is officially evaluated at 462,000 French Francs, which would be about equal to 1,300 American dollars, or to the value of a bit over 38 troy ounces of pure gold. Would you still be interested in buying that lot for that price, miss?’’

‘’I am!’’ answered at once Ingrid before opening her fanny pack and taking out of it three of the mini gold ingots she carried in a specially-made strong holder. She then put on the man’s desk the three gold ingots.

‘’I believe that this should easily cover the value of this land lot, Mister Nguyen.’’ The man’s eyes grew wide as he stared for a moment at the ingots before looking up at her with near shock.

‘’You are going around with ingots of pure gold, miss? You must be rich!’’

‘’I am rich! I am one of the three co-owners of Hughes Enterprises in California and am a multi-billionaire...in American dollars. However, I value that lot of land for its spiritual value, not for its agricultural potential. So, do we have a deal, Mister Nguyen?’’

‘’Uh, do you mind if I first have the value of those ingots evaluated by a professional, miss?’’

‘’Do you have such a professional close at hand, mister?’’

‘’Our municipal treasurer is an old banker and he has a precision scale in his office. Let’s go see him!’’

 

Nguyen and Ingrid then walked to the office of the treasurer, which was only two doors down the hallway, where they were able to weigh Ingrid’s ingots. The treasurer looked at Ingrid, clearly impressed, once the weighing was done.

‘’Each of your gold ingots weigh exactly sixteen troy ounces of pure gold, miss, which equates to a bit over half a million francs. Let me calculate the exact value for you.’’

The treasurer then used an old mechanical calculator to do that check.

‘’I certify your three gold ingots to be worth a total of 555,106 French Francs, miss.’’

‘’Then, I believe that we have a deal, Mister Nguyen.’’

‘’We indeed have, Miss Dows. Vu, could you make an official voucher for the value of those ingots? Miss Dows is going to buy the lot of land next to the chapel in Ward One.’’

The treasurer threw a worried look at Ingrid on hearing that.

‘’You do know that this part of our town is quite vulnerable to attack by those damn Japanese marauders, miss?’’

‘’Oh, I do know about those marauders, sir: I just killed six of them outside of town when they ambushed the bus I was in. Unfortunately for those bastards, I had a pistol with me at that time and I sent them where they belonged: in Hell.’’ The treasurer had a look at her holstered pistol strapped to her right upper leg, then grinned.

‘’Miss, you will be warmly welcomed here in Gia Rai.’’

‘’I hope so!’’ replied Ingrid with malice.

‘’Uh, what about the difference between the value of your gold and the price of that lot of land, miss?’’ asked the property manager. ‘’ we are talking about a surplus of over 93,000 French Francs.’’

Ingrid thought that over for a second before answering him.

‘’Prepare an official cheque for 93,000 French Francs, with Father Cyprien, of Ward One, as the named beneficiary. He will know who would have the most need for that money in his parish.’’

‘’Miss, you may be a billionaire but you are also a saint.’’

‘’Me, a saint? Naah! I am actually quite a bad girl who likes her fun quite a lot. I will also tell Father Cyprien that, until I can come back and arrange for a house to be built on my lot of land, he will be free to have it cultivated by local farmers of his choice, so that it doesn’t go to waste for years.’’

‘’Another generous idea on your part, miss. Well, let’s go back to my office, so that I could produce for you a proper land acquisition certificate for Lot 336.’’

 

As they were moving back to Mister Nguyen office, Ingrid gently brushed Hien’s head while speaking to her in a low voice.

‘’This new land possession will be in your name, Hien, with me as your official tutor until you reach majority. You will decide what we will do with it.’’

‘’I would like to offer that lot to the Truongs once a house will be built on it, Mommy: they both saved me from the Japanese and also raised me with love and caring while in France. That would also allow them to be able to return and live in their native land.’’

‘’That’s a most kind and thoughtful idea, Hien: I approve of it. We will thus go speak with them about this while on our way back via Paris.’’ Ingrid then sealed that declaration with a tender kiss on Hien’s forehead.