Vietnam War short stories (viii), ‘Hired Wives': A CIA Hired Wife Bares Her Soul is the story of a Saigon girl whose very first job, besides begging, was a bar girl, and is looking for another job as she was getting too old to be a bar girl anymore and would be out of work by the time she turned 18. One day, an American girlfriend who worked at the Tan Son Nhut USO (United Services Office), offered to help her get “an easy CIA job with plenty of free time.” Possessed by the common belief that all CIA employees and collaborators are spies, she astonishingly replied: “Me, a spy?” “No, silly, a hired wife for a CIA agent,” the American friend replied explaining how the CIA was accountable to no one in the United States government. Congress did not have a clue what money they had or how they spent it. That, essentially, the CIA was its own government with its own set of rules, and in wartime the agency had money to burn anyway they chose, no questions asked, national security and all that. It was the first time the girl has ever heard of such a position, and was so surprised in the least that her American friend knew of a class forming titled “How to Be a CIA Hired Wife” that was going to be taught at the Saigon Community College by the language instructor from the USO. The girl thus joined the class. The lessons were taught by an elderly Vietnamese woman who had been a hired wife to Office of Strategic Services (OSS) agents during and after World War II. When the OSS became the CIA, she made the easy transition for a few years. Mrs. Trung, the teacher, began her class with: “I am aware that some of you may be Viet Cong (VC) agents. Well, that is fine. If that is the case, I know you have been trained in complex ideas. Girls, brush all that out of your minds.” The teacher then presented her long-experience as a hired wife but at a different time, indeed: “Girls, when I was an OSS hired wife, there was not nearly as much money floating around as there is now. What cash there was back then, the agents used to do their jobs. During World War II, they armed and fed and clothed the peasants who were fighting the Japanese. The OSS agents were part of a grand scheme, the big picture. They were fighting on the side of angels, and they were knights in shining armour. “Keep that in mind and you will become rich, too. Just remember, the OSS agents wanted hired wives who were mistresses. The CIA agents want hired wives to be exactly like the wives they have back in the States.” Breezing through the class, the girl aced every test. She learned how to nag, how to get what she wanted at all times, and when to hold back her sexual favours. There were stock phrases that she mastered. Skillfully, she acquired the fine art of cooking lousy meatloafs and soupy casseroles. She kept in touch with a number of her classmates and found out they almost lost their fake husbands because they did not act like wives. To be on the safe side, and to make sure her husband felt married, she hired a mother-in-law from an agency. These older women were former hired wives during the OSS days. To be even safer, she employed teenage kids who played rock and roll records very loudly, snapped gum, and broke things around the villa. As more insurance, she purchased a stained bathrobe from a store specialising in items for hired wives, went to Tupperware parties, and even became an Avon lady. Besides her salary, she made plenty of money on the side. When her husband came back from one of his secret trips to Laos or Cambodia with a Ming vase or an Oriental rug, she would take the original and priceless object to a VC auction house, sell it, pocket the loot, and then buy a replacement from a cousin who sold great imitations. She would bring girlfriends around the villa for him to find a mistress on the side, which meant guilt-gifts and guilt-money for her. She also got a cut from the gifts he gave the mistresses for birthdays and holidays. Then, too, her hired mother was always “sick” and needed frequent operations. From the mother-in-law agency, she hired a brother-in-law. His job was to repeatedly hit up her husband for money for new business schemes. Incessantly, she would nag about being in the house all day, and he would give her money to go to a movie with her girlfriend. That was good for quite a bit of extra cash. If he gave her American money, she would exchange it at one of the illegal money exchanges and get four times its value. If he gave her piaster, she would keep her hand outstretched and he kept putting more in it. To keep him happy, she learned to protest loudly about women's libbers. She would just repeat what he always said about how they hated men and that they did not shave their arm pits. Of course, he had PX and commissary privileges. She would give him shopping lists that could have accommodated a hotel. One of her cousins would stop by in the mornings and buy 90 per cent of it for resell on the Black Market. He had stands all over Saigon. By selling secrets to a VC agent who was married to her sister, she also made a few bucks on the side. But it was chicken feed, because most of the information she heard him discuss when he thought she was out of earshot was already known by the VC or useless because it was not true. Like a yo-yo, she had to gain weight and then always be on a diet. She joined health clubs and Weight Watchers. Once a week she went to a beauty shop, because that was what his real wife at home did. She was regularly thinking of ways to look more like the hausfrau he had in the States. Unceasingly, she griped about the hired help, and he would invariably give her money to pay the agency for new ones. Without delay, she would pocket the money and keep the same maids or cooks. The moron never even noticed. To keep up the charade, she subscribed to movie magazines and “The National Enquirer” and watched the soaps on American Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN) when he was home. When he left, she was so culturally deprived that she gorged on Voltaire and Dickens. When he thought she was at health clubs, beauty shops, and Tupperware parties, in fact, she was attending classes at Saigon University. While employed by all her CIA husbands, she took classes and over the years picked up a law degree, a medical degree, and a Ph.D. in economics. Her fake mate sent his relatives back in the States those tacky ceramic elephants that every American just had to own. Before sending it, he would show it to her and brag how he, in his words, “Jewed them down.” In fact, he always got cheated. So she suggested that she shop for him, and he would give her the money he normally spent. Then, she would spend one tenth of what her bogus betrothed would have spent and just pocketed the change. During her hired wife days, she was forever whining about something and he, as well as the others who came after him, predictably responded in the same way. He would give her money. It was so damn easy that it was becoming monotonous. She visited every relative she had in South Vietnam, from the Delta to the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) and a few in North Vietnam as well. Not often, though, because she detested the traffic jams on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. After one too many fender-benders, she started to fly to Paris and then fly to Hanoi, using a forged passport, of course. One of her cousins was in that line of work. Imagine, if you will, the United States foreign policy being shaped by information gathered by such men. But mostly what was so amusing was that the fake husband and other CIA agents would watch Mission Impossible episodes on AFVN and scoff that Hollywood did not get it right by portraying a Black man and a white woman as agents.
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