This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.

Farewell, Uncle Ho

by Dennis Milholland

questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu

Chapter 87 (Friday, July 14, 1967)

The short, plump, southern European, who ran the Foreign Exchange office, and who had greeted Jules with the usual kisses to both cheeks, was holding one of the $500 bills up to the glare from a reading lamp on his desk. He nodded, arose, causing the wheels of his office chair to click on the tiled floor, and he shuffled to one of the three metal filing cabinets. The file, which he'd extracted contained currency warnings from the Federal Reserve System. "The denomination and this serial number from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, has been flagged by the FBI." He looked over his reading glasses at Jules; Jules looked at me. "It'll be difficult, unless you invest it in Swiss gold."

"What would be the conditions for Swiss gold?" Jules wanted to know. "For say, $150,000 of this quality?"

"Let's see." He checked a piece of paper pinned to a cork board above his desk. "One troy ounce of gold is $34.98 today." He typed the numbers and turned the crank on the Facit pin-wheel calculator. "That would get you," He mumbled. "4,288.164665523 troy ounces. Our laundry fee is to round down to the amount in front of the decimal plus five percent of the gold." Again he operated the calculator. "You would receive 4,073.6 troy ounces in bullion at a value of $142,494.528."

"And that fee is for anything over...?" Jules was bargaining.

"$100,000." The pudgy man smiled. "And valid until tomorrow. Gold prices are fluctuating slightly. But it is actually our laundering price that fluctuates the most."

End of bargaining. Jules nodded, as if to tell me that there would be no better deal to be had . Deep down, I had to agree.

***

Even the walk back up the slight incline of Tu-Do Street was beginning to become a real effort, due to the muggy heat. After all it was siesta and the streets were deserted for a reason. I'd requested Jules to accompany me back home, since I didn't think that it would be a wise idea to be walking the empty streets alone with a hundred twenty thousand dollars in my pocket. Many people have died for much less.

In front of the photographic supply store, I happened to glance back and noticed a guy in a tan suit and Elvis-styled pomaded hair following us. I nudged Jules. "Why are there three of us on this street?"

He looked back down toward the river and stopped. He said something in Vietnamese, and the man came running up to us, smiling. Jules took hold of my arm. "This is Jonny; Jonny, this is Ben."

"Yeah, I know." Jonny spoke that slightly over-accentuated American English of someone, who'd learned the formal language in school, then perfecting it with sloppy slang from rock n' roll records and the GIs. He smiled and held out his hand.

I took it, shook it, returned the smile, and I was still puzzled. "And who are you?"

"I work for ol' man Chung." He then slipped effortlessly into Cantonese. "I'm one of your shadows. And he wants to congratulate you on your good fortune." Obviously, news travelled fast in Saigon.

***

As we parted in front of the main door to our building, Jonny jokingly said that he'd be seeing us, but that we probably wouldn't be seeing him, unless we were out and about during the siesta or after curfew. The coolness of the stairwell was very welcome, as the door to the building slowly closed.

Opening the door to our apartment, smells of beef curry greeted us from the kitchen. Linh hurried to greet us with a hug, as Jules and I moved through the door and into the entry space, a short distance from the living room.

The second they heard the door, Gerry and Yvette jumped out of their seats, seemingly very excited. They were each holding parts of the documents from the box, and both started to speak at the same time. I gave Gerry a hello kiss, giving Yvette a chance to continue.

"Do you have any idea, where this money came from?" Yvette was excited, almost to the point of screeching.

"Yeah, they're uncirculated notes from the Dallas Federal Reserve, which is ironic, since that was where Kennedy was assassinated." I replied, taking the aperitif from Linh and ruffling his hair in thanks.

"That's right." Yvette nodded. "But they were part of a large laundry shipment to l'Institut pour les œuvres de religion at the request of someone inside the CIA, and it's apparently officially laundered Laotian drug money."

"What's l'Institut pour les œuvres de religion?" I tasted Linh's concoction, and as usual it was delicious.

Gerry tensed with excitement. "It's, uh, better known as the Vatican Bank."

***

Monsieur Prétini, the exchange officer at the Majestic appeared to be highly regarded by Jules and Yvette; even Linh said that the French Embassy also used to let Prétini handle their local foreign-exchange transactions. According to Linh, Prétini was a leftover from the old Banque de l'Indochine. They also all agreed that he had more integrity than this country's Finance Minister, whom no one trusted.

"Okay, are we all agreed, that Prétini will exchange the entire amount into Swiss gold?" I translated the question for Linh, and everyone nodded. So, I continued. "And we all agree not to talk about this to anyone?" Again I translated it for Linh and again everyone nodded.

"A question." Linh held up his index finger. "I know why I won't tell anyone about this," He chuckled, somewhat nervously. "But why is it that you don't want us to talk to others?"

"For much the same reason, Linh." I had to grin at his logic.

And having read Lucien Conein's papers, Gerry went on to explain, as I translated. "There would be huge international implications, if it became public belief that the CIA paid Nguyen Van Nhung, Big Minh's bodyguard and boyfriend, $42,000, to kill President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother, Nhu, on 2 November 1963. And if this flagged money were to surface in Saigon, it would make it look like the Ngo family hired the local branch of the Corsican Mafia to assassinate Kennedy, since it's already a proven fact that Ngo Dinh Nhu's secret police, was planning to kill the American ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. And, this way, the CIA could fall back on this story, should the Lee Oswald story not fly."

"And thanks to the huge press release by the CIA, every American believes to know that, immediately following the Dallas assassination, Madame Nhu said to Jackie Kennedy: 'Now, you know what it feels like.'

"The fact is that Kennedy did order the assassination of the Ngo brothers for personal political reasons." I spoke into the round. "But the question remains, whether the Ngo family has anything to do with murdering Kennedy?"

"The Kennedy assassination actually was the CIA's plan carried out by their political hit squad, called S Force, and bankrolled by Texan oil billionaires, the funds for which were laundered by the Vatican Bank, which is the only bank in the world with diplomatic immunity." Gerry paused to look at Conein's notes. While I was translating, Linh looked at Yvette, who nodded.

Gerry continued. "The CIA wanted Kennedy out of the way, because of his weak stance on Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and his subsequent threat to break the CIA into 'tiny pieces' along with his unwillingness to support them with more military troops here in Vietnam." Gerry shook his head in utter disbelief of the words, coming out of his own mouth. "According to Conein, the entire operation in this country is the CIA's baby. The military is only a convenient strong arm, hiding the CIA's operations, like running the heroin trade out of Laos."

Gerry flipped a couple of pages, and he reached for his glass, clinking the ice cubes before taking a healthy swig of his aperitif. "Texan oil billionaires hated Kennedy, because he wanted to reduce or even abolish the 27% tax break for the oil industry, called the Oil Depletion Allowance."

Gerry swirled the ice cubes, once again. "The weapons industry, or as Eisenhower called it 'the military industrial complex' didn't like him, because he was against a military take-over of Cuba and dead set against escalating this war here in Vietnam. In fact, he wanted the troops completely out by 1965."

He finished off his aperitif. "The Mafia, the Chicago branch of which had gotten JFK into the White House, by letting a whole graveyard full of dead people vote, was determined to take him out. Kennedy had pissed them off, because he'd dumped the idea of intervention in Cuba and was then unwilling to get them back their casinos, hotels and whorehouses.

"Clyde Tolson and his boyfriend, J. Edgar Hoover, who have big ties to big oil, hated both JFK and his little brother, because the president had appointed Bobby as their nanny, to keep more than just an eye on them." Gerry set down his glass along with the papers and picked up another stack.

He cleared his throat and lit a cigarette. "And, last but not least, the Vatican wanted the Catholic Kennedy eliminated, because he'd categorically refused to back Catholic Diem and to blindly follow orders from the pope.

"After the French had left, Diem and his other brother Thurc protected the vast landholdings of the church in Vietnam. The Vatican felt itself at risk, since Kennedy had issued Diem a strong ultimatum, that the United States would no longer support a government guilty of religious persecution. This is when Kennedy started mentioning a leadership change, since Americans now strongly supported the Buddhists after Thich Quang Duc set himself on fire in June of 1963 in protest against how Diem had, or in this case, had not handled the Buddhist Crisis."

After I finished translating for Linh, he went off to the kitchen to look after lunch, shaking his head and mumbling something. He seemed disgusted.

Gerry also grumbled something to himself, took a drag off his cigarette and continued. "Bill Harvey, who vehemently hated the Kennedys for personal reasons, and was the station chief of the CIA's field station in Rome, came here to Saigon with the $192,000 of Vatican money to pay for the various assassinations. But when Conein arrived in Dallas, the killing had already been financed in full by Texan billionaires, and he was told to keep the change."

I looked sternly at Gerry. "$192,000?"

Gerry grinned. "Yeah, looks like Conein didn't want to ruin the local economy." He took another drag off his cigarette. "The CIA had been willing to pay $84,000 to kill Diem. Conein kept half."

"And Conein was at the Kennedy assassination?" I ventured. Yvette held her slender hand up to her mouth.

"Yeah." Gerry flipped the ash from his cigarette, then flipped more pages. "According to Conein, members of Dallas Oil, the CIA, the FBI, the Catholic Church, the Mafia, were all present at Daley Plaza, when the shots were fired." Gerry's stomach growled. "Even William Greer, Kennedy's Secret-Service driver, a Protestant from Northern Ireland, apparently slowed almost to a stop, turned and lifted his gun over his right shoulder but didn't have to shoot, since the back of Kennedy's head was already flying off and Jackie was on the trunk. He'd been the backup. Looks like the only ones, who weren't clued in were the Kennedys."

***

After Linh's excellent beef curry and our noon-time Park Lane and cognac, Yvette returned to her apartment, Linh grabbed Jules, leaving Gerry and me alone. My guy grinned mischievously, as he pulled me to our bedroom,

We slowly undressed each other, and Gerry slid down my torso with his tongue teasing my skin. Because of the weather, we were both sweating, and, as if we'd been in a sauna since our arrival, the sweat smell was no longer pungent, as it would possibly have been in New York.

Gerry stood up, took me into his arms. "You know," He was thinking for a second about how to phrase it; his face expressed genuine concern. "yesterday, I was afraid that you were going to trade me in for Jules."

"I would never do that, mein Schatz." I assured him, pulling him even tighter.

"Then. show me." Gerry grinned again mischievously and directed my hands down toward his smooth ass. "Fuck me."

I thrust my bad boy back onto the bed forcefully, making him bounce a couple of times on the mattress. His hot ass was too far from the edge, so I grabbed his ankles and pulled it toward me. I squatted between his now bent and opened knees, thighs, ass cheeks. I hocked onto his hole spreading the snot around with my tongue. I tongued his taint until he writhed, and I returned my focus to his entry. Another gob of snot, glistened on his pink anal flesh in the early afternoon sun, filtering in stripes through the shutter slats, being reflected off the tilted window glass across the courtyard.

My next objective was to extract smegma from behind the ridge of Gerry's glans. My lips sucked slightly on the nipple at the end of his skin. Then, I let my mouth push it back; my tongue encircled the purple-red head. And my tongue soon found some of the tallow-like substance, which made Gerry squirm and grip my head.

My tongue had harvested a nice amount of the fatty, white matter and lovingly smeared it around the inside of his hole. He opened and I stood resting my chest on the soles of his feet and slowly entered him. His eyes told me that he now had his sought-after proof.