Tucker's Last Stand (15 page)

“Yes, sir,” Valenti said.

14

July 20, 1964

Danang, South Vietnam

Blackford flatly disbelieved that the port of Danang had once been, among other things, a beach resort used by the French for pleasure. But Alphonse Juilland, his balding, ascetic, fifty-one-year-old guide, who had taught French to the same young Vietnamese who now scorned the language and disdained anyone who would stoop to learn it, assured him that it was so. “It is very full of shipping here now, I grant you”—he spoke in French, which Blackford managed without much difficulty (when stuck he would resort to German, in which Juilland was shakily fluent)—“with all that shipping, it is difficult to visualize the scene here before Dien Bien Phu.” That had been the critical battle, lost by the French, won by Ho Chi Minh, that had ended the French colony of Indochina. “But there are old photographs, and even a few paintings. On some days, may God save me if I mislead you, the scene there”—he pointed to the north end of the deep harbor—“might have been the beach at Cannes or at Nice.

“You know, M. Oakes, I have been at Cannes and at Nice. My father was also a schoolteacher, at Lyons, and when I was a boy, before he decided to come here, just before the war, we often went to those places to vacation, so that what I tell you is the truth. Danang was a very beautiful resort facility.”

Blackford wanted to grumble something to the effect that it was certainly making up now for all the imperialist pleasure it had given in the past. But he only shook his head, which he frequently did in replying to the tall, thin, talkative bachelor, an amiable outcast who was without relatives in France, Blackford was quickly advised. The only skill he could merchandise, now that he could no longer teach French to the Vietnamese, was that bilingualism on which he traded. He would translate any instructions Blackford directed at the leaders of the flotilla of little fishing ships, 95 percent of which came in and out of Danang to sell fish, 5 percent of which came in and out of Danang to report to Central Intelligence.

The 5 percent fished for information during their innocent little forays into waters close to North Vietnam, when by their movements they triggered radio signals and well-concealed radar devices that beamed out reciprocal attention from the mainland. They regularly provoked defensive bursts from the batteries of North Vietnamese radar installations, the characteristics of whose short-range signals the South Vietnamese military technicians would carefully transcribe, leaving to the offshore American naval vessels attached to the Seventh Fleet the job of tracking and fingerprinting the character and location of the heavier radar installations.

On that first day Blackford was briefing the captain of one of the larger fishing boats equipped with the new 34-A radar gear. Alphonse Juilland relayed a question by the captain.

“He wants to know whether he isn't violating North Vietnamese territorial rights by advancing to within eight miles of Quang Khe, which is in North Vietnam.”

Blackford replied succinctly. “Tell the captain that the United States acknowledges North Vietnamese territorial rights over only three miles offshore, just as the United States claims for itself only three miles offshore.”

Juilland came back. “The captain says that the Chinese have always insisted on twelve miles' jurisdiction, and that when the French were defeated he assumed that the Chinese, not the French tradition, was adopted.”

“Tell the captain, Alphonse”—Blackford attempted to communicate his conclusion that no more needed to be said on this thorny subject, which so greatly concerned diplomatic nail-biters in Washington—“that the North Vietnamese have entered no such claims before any relevant authority and that therefore any interference with any boat observing the three-mile limit is interference with the freedom of the seas.”

“How'd he take it, Alphonse?” Blackford asked as they walked down the wharf, looking for the next boatman they needed to brief and rationing their intake of air in a vain attempt to limit their intake of the fetid-fish odor.

“If you want to know, M. Oakes, he was quite skeptical. I took the liberty of adding to what you said that if the captain did not wish to take this assignment, there were others who would be glad to substitute for him.

“How close do you intend to maneuver your private navy, if I may ask, M. Oakes. Right up to the three-mile limit?”

“The answer to that is easy, Alphonse. You may not ask.”

Alphonse smiled, and then stopped. “Here is the
Mau Cao
.” They were alongside the scruffy-looking 44-foot fishing boat with its single, stubby mast and coarse, furled mainsail to give it stability in a heavy wind. Blackford looked at the boat with intense concentration to ascertain at what distance its large concealed radar set would be discernible by the enemy as such. He could readily make it out to be what it was, but then he was alongside it at eye level. The North Vietnamese would be training powerful telescopes on the fishing fleet. Would they be able to make it out as radar? Probably not, he concluded. But if one of their little NVA patrol boats ambled up and made its observations from the edge of the three-mile limit focusing 10 x 7 lenses on a boat idling at, say, four miles offshore, what then?

Still safe, he decided.

What would not be in the least safe was any situation in which a North Vietnamese patrol boat advanced
beyond
its own territorial waters to within two or three hundred yards of the 34-A boats. And they had every right to do so, under the law of the seas, provided they did not interfere with the right of the fishing boats to do as they liked. And it was not illegal to have radar, even hidden radar, trained on the coastline of a foreign country. To do such a thing—Blackford recalled the briefing in Washington by the British specialist on the law of the seas—“may be provocative, but it is not illegal. A boat may approach the three-mile limit off Coney Island and snap pictures of a honeymoon couple having at it in a hotel room on the beach and there isn't anything illegal about it, though we will all agree that that is offensive behavior. But then we're not talking about prurient activity. We are engaged in examining the resources of the enemy.”

“Of the
potential
enemy.” The colonel had interrupted him.

“Of the potential enemy,” the expert said, correcting himself.

Summoned by Rufus to Saigon, Blackford landed at the Tan Son Nhut airport at four on that steaming hot afternoon and went to the Naval Officers Quarters, where he was expected in a suite reserved for a “technical consultant.” A half hour later he flagged a taxi and took it to a corner two blocks from the safe house. Five minutes later he was in Rufus's company. Beginning at 5:12, they spent an enjoyable two hours together.

“You're going to want me to go through all this again when Tucker comes in, right?” Blackford said.

“I would think he would be as eager to know what is going on on your front as you will be to discover what is going on in planning on the Trail. Since we now have the cross-clearances, you can tell him everything you told me. The objective of your weekly visits, after all, is to coordinate your operations. But on this first trip he'll be bringing us news from Aberdeen—he left yesterday.”

“Which reminds me, where in the hell
is
Tucker?”

Rufus looked at his watch. “The dispatch said his plane was due in a half hour after yours. He said he would be here at the same time as you, five-twelve.” Rufus went to the telephone. He stood motionless for just a moment. Blackford knew that Rufus was engaged in recalling Air America flights (an unlisted carrier) coming in from Honolulu—arriving, given that the carrier was an arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, at unpublished times—and doing calculations. He dialed and spoke a few words, then put down the telephone.

“The plane landed as expected. At three-thirty-five.”

Blackford said nothing.

Rufus also paused. And then said, “I rule out foul play.”

Rufus looked up at Blackford.

They had known each other now for … it was London, September 1951, his first assignment … The search for the highly sheltered person leaking nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. An assignment so delicate as to warrant overseeing by the legendary—“Rufus” was his entire name, for all that Blackford knew. Blackford remembered sensing, after fifteen minutes with Rufus, that the older man knew exactly what was going on in Blackford's mind, which spooky knowledge Rufus sometimes gave away by answering a question before it was asked, even a question Blackford had never intended to pose. And now, after a moment, Rufus said:

“I think you're right.” That was all. Quickly followed by, “In which case we may as well go ahead with dinner.” He reached for his briefcase and umbrella.

15

July 22, 1964

Aboard Mr. Fortas's Chartered Yacht,

Potomac River

Abe Fortas was well known for his hospitality. His tastes were refined in all matters, food (French), music (he played the violin), and the law (he was a distinguished practitioner). And he didn't mind it that
tout Washington
, as the gossip columnists like to put it, knew of his singular intimacy with the President of the United States. Abe Fortas enjoyed the relationship with a sitting American President, quite apart from his growing certainty that it would bear fruit with a seat on the Supreme Court. He was not in a great hurry for that lofty distinction because his habits required high-octane cash flow, and, of course, acceptance of a seat in the Court meant goodbye to those clients who maintained him in a lifestyle he found entirely comfortable. His income, in combination with the power he was known to exercise by his access to the President and the President's known confidence in his judgment, permitted him to see whom he chose, pretty much under such conditions as he chose.

It was hardly remarkable, then, that Abe Fortas should be having dinner with the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on a Friday in July. The Director had frequent contact with the President, of course, but that was a formal relationship. Dining with Abe Fortas was like dining with the President with his hair down.

The setting, as always with Fortas, was: just right. It was a chartered boat … a little cruise on the Potomac, just the four of them, the two couples. The social understanding, as ever, was effortlessly suggested: there were burdens of government to be shouldered, so that the wives, congenial, made it plain that they were content to sit in the sheltered aft cockpit, sip at a cocktail or two, and watch the evening's television news, or the shoreline, while Abe Fortas and the Director shared a corner of the walnut-stained saloon, nicely air-conditioned, from which the 500-horsepower motors were a mere purr in the background, Washington a passing aesthetic gratification. And so they sat with their highballs, viewing the profile of the Athens of the modern world sliding by serenely at the relaxing 7-knot pace Abe Fortas had specified to the captain. Abe found his memory going back twenty-five years to a ride he had taken at the New York World's Fair. Seated on a moving platform, he had glided past visions of the world of the future. It was so very comfortable, so relaxing, so—right.

Abe Fortas led the Director on. The news from Vietnam was persistently bad, was it not?

It certainly was.

Just conceivably—conceivably even the Director did not know of this particular event, because, uh, the President had told it to Abe Fortas in
supreme
confidence—but of course that confidence could hardly exclude the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency! Still, just as a
matter of precaution
, please—please!—never let it be known that he now knew about it, if in fact he didn't already know about it.

Know about what? The Director leaned forward just slightly.

“The Canadian overture.”

The Director hesitated. On the one hand he did not in fact know anything about any “Canadian overture.” On the other hand, he did not wish to admit ignorance of something that obviously touched directly on his concerns as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He thought for a moment to give an ambiguous answer, but then decided he had better not try that kind of evasion with this … particular … person.

“I don't know about it.”

Ah. Well, Abe Fortas was not entirely surprised, because they both knew the President's habits. He would not be surprised to discover that Mrs. Johnson knew nothing about it or, for that matter, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Ho-ho-ho.

The Director smiled, and then waited.

What it proves, said Abe Fortas, concentrating the features of his face on what he was saying and rubbing his thumb on his highball glass, is
the extent
to which the President is willing to go in dealing with Vietnam.

What had he done?

Well, what he did was send a
personal
emissary—it doesn't matter who that emissary was, does it?—to the Canadian member of the International Control Commission, which, let's face it, is just about the
only
way to get private word to Ho Chi Minh, unless you want to use the Soviet Ambassador, which avenue we do not want to use, obviously—

The Director caught the “we.”

—to put it on the line. If Ho Chi Minh will just cut it out in South Vietnam, if he will simply let the South develop its own democratic system, in its own way—let it loose, in the fashion of South Korea being loose—if Ho Chi Minh would just agree to that, the President would stake
his very office
on his ability to reconstitute the economy of North Vietnam. Abe Fortas used the figure—it was a whisper now—
ten billion dollars
.

The Director said nothing, though he inclined his head, as if to acknowledge that ten billion dollars was a great deal of money.

Abe Fortas leaned back and sipped at his highball.