Dead and Kicking Read Online Free

Saigon where Graham Greene had stayed exclusively while researching
The Quiet American
. Restored to its original Art Deco glory in the 1990s, the hotel was centrally located, sedate and comfortable, and actually did have quite an interesting history.
    ‘Bugger me, the old Luxe Royale,’ Jack had said to me when we met a couple of days before filming began. ‘Biggest knocking shop in Saigon, back in the day.’
    I’d glanced around at the wood-panelled and plushly carpeted lobby with its rattan armchairs and potted palms. ‘Really? This place was a brothel?’
    ‘You better believe it, mate,’ Jack had said. ‘That plaque should read “On this site more GIs contracted the clap than in any other place in South-East Asia”. I think they used to have a giant, flashing neon sign up on the roof advertising penicillin.’
    My fourth-floor room had a small balcony opening onto a public square. It was a great place to unwind with a G & T after a long day and I was really going to miss the joint. Any bullet holes left by drunken partying American soldiers had long been papered over, along with those made by the Vietcong when they’d briefly taken the hotel during the ’68 Tet offensive. Today’s guests enjoyed king-sized beds, air-conditioning, 24-hour room service – now limited to food and booze only – and big marble bathrooms with plenty of hot water.
    I took a long shower while my images from the day’s shoot uploaded and downlinked to our production office on the Gold Coast and to MB&F, the movie’s marketing and PR people in New York. By the time I had towelled off and poured myself a whisky, my knees had stopped shaking from VT’s moves in the Huey. It made you wonder what the bloke could manage in an up-to-date attack chopper like an Apache or Super Cobra.
    There was an email in my inbox from Julie Danko, who was in the US attending a counter-insurgency seminar at the Battle Command Training Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. ‘Congratulations on not getting suspended, demoted or fired for eight straight weeks, Alby,’ the email read. ‘Is this a new record?’
    Julie worked with me at D.E.D. and had been my 2IC during the demoralising six-month stint I’d recently spent as acting Director-General. I had learnt a lot during that time, including the fact that I wasn’t cut out for management. I’d also learnt there was a lot more to Julie than met the eye – never mind that what met the eye was pretty spectacular.
    After carefully packing all my serious camera gear into travelling cases and my spare clothes into a suitcase, I phoned reception for a bellboy. My cases would be shipped back to the Gold Coast studios, along with the rest of the production’s equipment, but with a week or two to kill I planned on staying on in Vietnam. I’d travel light, with just a passport, a backpack, a compact Nikon DSLR and a couple of lenses in a small camera bag, plus my tiny digital Leica D-Lux in my pocket.
    When I wandered into the cocktail bar of the hotel just after nine there was a string quartet playing. Neatly dressed guests were sipping champagne and politely refusing canapés from passing waiters. The producer, director, screenwriter, various money men and the usual studio bods and hangers-on clocked me, immediately recognised that I wasn’t anybody important and went back to their networking.
    ‘I’ll help you with those, sport,’ I said, pinching a silver tray of deep-fried spring rolls from a waiter and kicking open the French doors leading out to where the real action was. ‘
Cha gio
, anyone?’ I yelled. ‘Get ’em while they’re hot.’
    The Doors’ ‘Love Her Madly’ was blasting out over an open marble terrace packed with crew and actors, local production office people, girlfriends, boyfriends and assorted camp followers. A film crew on location usually sorts itself into a number of temporary relationships, most of which don’t survive past the end of the shoot.
    My time in Vietnam