Heads You Win

“Pity Warwick didn’t lock her up for the day. That would certainly have helped our chances. But we can still win.”

They began to work the room. Several members shook Sasha’s hand warmly, while others turned their backs on him—one or two of whom he’d considered supporters, even friends. He tried to speak to everyone who hadn’t yet voted, even if he knew they had no intention of backing him. It was clear that some people still believed Fiona’s story, or wanted to, while others admitted to him that their own fingerprints might well be on that fire escape. Sasha didn’t stop until the last vote had been cast at six o’clock, when he joined Ben and Charlie at the Union bar. Fiona’s supporters occupied one side of the room, while Sasha’s filled the other half.

“When will you find out the result?” asked Charlie as she sipped a lager.

“Around seven,” said Ben. “So not long to wait.”

Ben’s prediction turned out to be wrong, because it was nearer eight when the retiring president, Chris Smith, entered the bar and made his way to the center of the room, a single sheet of paper in his hand. He waited for complete silence before he spoke.

“I would like to begin by explaining why we’ve taken so long to announce the result. Three recounts were required before the tellers were able to agree on the outcome. So I can now tell you that, by a majority of three votes, the next president of the Cambridge Union will be…”

19

ALEX

Vietnam, 1972

Alex read the letter a second time, before he showed it to his mother. Elena wept, because she knew exactly what her son would do.

“If only we’d gone to England, this would never have happened,” she said, and couldn’t help thinking they’d climbed into the wrong crate.

Many young men who were reading the same letter that morning would already be on the phone to their fathers’ lawyers, or paying a visit to the family doctor, while others would simply tear up the draft, hoping the problem would go away. But not Alex.

Elena wasn’t the only person who cried. Addie begged him to at least try and get a deferral, pointing out that as he was in his final year at NYU, they would surely allow him to complete his degree. Although she cried all night, Alex wasn’t persuaded.

He still had one pressing problem that needed to be solved before he could pack his bags and leave home. His eleven stalls were now making a handsome profit, and he certainly didn’t want to sell any of them. But who could run his burgeoning empire while he was away? To his surprise, it was his mother who came up with the solution.

“I’ll give up my job at Mario’s, and Dimitri and I will take them over until you come back.”

No one raised the subject of what would happen if he didn’t return.

Alex happily accepted their offer, and on February 11, 1972, he boarded a train for Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to begin an eight-week course of basic training, before being shipped out to Vietnam.

*   *   *

The lights went on. “Up, up, up!” shouted a staff sergeant at the top of his voice as he marched down the corridor between the sleeping recruits, his baton striking the end of every bunk. One by one the young men were rudely awakened, and, unaccustomed to the hour, blinked and rubbed their eyes, with one exception. By four in the morning, Alex would already have been on his way to the market.

“The Vietcong are charging toward you,” yelled their instructor, “and they’ll kill the last man who puts his feet on the ground!”

Alex was already heading toward the showers, towel in hand. He turned on a tap that offered no choice between cold and cold.

“Anyone who hasn’t showered, shaved, and dressed in fifteen minutes, won’t be fed before lunch.” Suddenly bodies were racing toward the showers.

Alex was the first to be seated on one of the long wooden benches in the mess hall. He had quickly become aware how his mother had spoiled him over the years. It wasn’t until the third morning, by which time he’d become so desperate, that he accepted a breakfast of lumpy porridge, greasy bacon, burned toast, and a hot black liquid the army called coffee.

When he was introduced to the parade ground, followed by the gym, route marches, and wading across a freezing river holding a rifle above his head, he quickly discovered he wasn’t quite as fit as he’d imagined. However, he did manage to stay a yard or two ahead of most of his fellow recruits, who until then had considered Saturday evenings were for drinking and Sunday mornings for sleeping it off. The staff sergeant gently reminded them that the Vietcong didn’t take the weekends off.

While Alex continued to hold his own in the gym, on the shooting range, and in the hills during night operations, he excelled in the classroom, where the education officer attempted to explain why America had become embroiled in a war in the Far East.

Alex became fascinated by the history of Vietnam, and how the north and south had been united since AD 939, but were now at each other’s throats.