Finding the Dragon Lady Read Free Page A

her role as a diplomat’s wife in Washington, DC. When she hosted events, she asked that no one be allowed to wear the imperial color, yellow, except for her.
    The Chuongs had lived in Washington since Chuong’s appointment as the South Vietnamese ambassador in 1957. They returned toVietnam for brief visits in the 1960s, but never after the 1975 Communist victory. The Chuongs were long retired; Madame Nhu’s father was eighty-eight and her mother seventy-six. They were just an elderly couple living out their last days in a quiet suburb of Washington, DC, when their only son killed them in their home. The murders brought the tragic and bizarre family history back into the spotlight.
    Madame Nhu did not go to the funeral. By that time, she was growing old herself. She was a sixty-one-year-old recluse living in a shabby villa on the outskirts of Rome with her children. There had been rumors that Madame Nhu had emptied the South Vietnamese treasury before she left the country for the last time, but there was little outward sign of luxury anymore. Piece by piece she had sold off her property. A few straggly olive trees and some grazing sheep were all that separated the grandly named Villa of Serene Light from Rome’s urban sprawl. Her only valuables had been those she managed to squirrel out of Saigon on her person, the jewelry and furs she was wearing and those tucked in her valise. Those were soon gone too. In 1971, Madame Nhu had been the victim of a jewelry heist: thieves made off with $32,000 in gold, jade, and gems. 1 Madame Nhu probably would not have been able to afford the trip to Washington, DC, to see her parents buried—at least not in a style that she would have considered fitting.
    On Madame Nhu’s last trip to the United States, in October 1963, her parents had left her standing on the doorstep of their Washington home with the door shut firmly in her face. Her father had called her “power mad” and said they “did not wish to know her” anymore. Her mother urged Americans to throw eggs and tomatoes at her.
    Talking back would have broken the most sacred Confucian value: filial piety. A child should always respect her parents. The furthest Madame Nhu would go was to suggest that her parents must be “intoxicated.” It was one of Madame Nhu’s favorite lines—she used it against her parents, the international press, and even American president John F. Kennedy. But its meaning in English was not exactly what she intended. Intoxicated in French means poisoned. She meant to suggest that the Communists had poisoned the well of public opinion against her. She was trying to suggest that a desperate Communist tactic wasat work—one intended to alienate her family from the Americans. But Madame Nhu didn’t get her message across. Instead she sounded shrill, accusing those she didn’t like of being drunk. After the 1963 coup in Saigon, the press reported that Madame Nhu had reconciled with her father. Chuong said of the rapprochement, “My heart was very near my daughter’s.”
    To their neighbors, the Chuongs were just a sweet old couple, the kind who smile at children and puppies and wear sweaters even in the summer. Their home, at 5601 Western Avenue, was a two-story brick Georgian with white trim. The hedges were always neat, the walkway swept clear. Chuong’s doctor described him as a pleasant gentleman, “very friendly,” his wife, somewhat effervescent, always with a smile. It was inconceivable to think that this couple had survived three wars, evaded the colonial secret police, and outwitted the Communist guerrillas only to meet their end on a quiet July night in the seeming safety of their own home.
    The police report had been graphic in detailing the discovery of the bodies. Madame Chuong lay on top of her husband. Her right arm was draped around him, as if she had died hugging him. They wore matching striped pajamas, but his