Tucker's Last Stand (18 page)

Le Duc Sy found the developing story engrossing. He put down his glass. “Are you permitted to tell me?”

To the extent that Bui Tin could laugh, he now did so. “It would hardly be possible to instruct you on your next mission
without
telling you. The CIA and the Pentagon, on instructions from the President, are planning a major, innovative program. They call it ‘Igloo White.' It is, no less, a program to implant a great technologically devised barrier at the choke points of two critical passes, Nape and Mu Gia, in an attempt to seal off the Trail
I
am in charge of keeping open.”

Bui Tin paused to light a cigarette. “We know the identity of the official who is in charge of that operation. His name is Montana. Tucker Montana. He has the rank of a major in the army. We assume that his training is in engineering or physics. Apparently he has contributed novel ideas that involve the use of sensors of various kinds designed to pinpoint movement through those passes, the purpose being to alert bombers and fighter planes to the means to stop our traffic. The scientific work, under the general guidance of Montana, is being done at Aberdeen Proving Ground, the center of clandestine technology. It will take we do not know how long to develop. But we must learn everything that can be learned about the Igloo enterprise. And the man who knows it in every detail—this Montana—spends his time in Nakhon Phanom in Thailand, which is the U.S. headquarters for the Igloo operation. And he travels regularly to Saigon where he meets with another CIA operative, one Blackford Oates.” Bui Tin reached for a scratch pad and wrote out the names of the two men. “Oates—no. O-A-K-E-S—was the other official who conducted the exploration of the Trail I have mentioned.”

“So. What is my mission?”

“Your mission is very indirect. Very … personal.”

“And?”

Bui Tin paused. “When your letter to me arrived, I took it to Colonel Giap. I don't mean the letter, merely the name of your—wife. His reaction was explosive.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your wife, Lao Dai, is our most important—” he paused. Was there another word for it? Bui Tin was not given to euphemisms. “Our most important—seductress. She has performed important work for us, very important work for us. And,” Bui Tin got up, and turned his head away, “she had been selected, though not yet informed of the fact that her mission would be—to seduce Mr. Tucker.”

Now Le Duc Sy stood up. “But now she is my wife!”

“That she is your wife,” Bui Tin spoke solemnly now, “is entirely subordinate to the Independence Movement. That you react this way is one reason why agents are not supposed to marry.”

Le Duc Sy's imagination had always been vivid. Suddenly he was able, as the soldier in a movement, to shift perspectives. He paused, and found himself saying, “There is no doubt in heaven itself that she is the most alluring woman in Saigon. What is it proposed that
I
should do?”

“You are to be ‘conscripted' by the South Vietnamese army. This is very easy for us to effect, through our contacts within that army. You will be sent on maneuvers. And, on a night patrol, you will meet with a most unfortunate fate.”

“Like what?” Le Duc Sy's professional curiosity was now dominant.

“You will be killed. Killed in action.”

“Are you suggesting that Lao Dai will think me dead?”

“No. We cannot expect a sacrifice of that character. She will be told what duty requires. You will be reported as having been killed, she will publicly mourn the event. And privately she will be confident that, at the correct moment in the future, you will be reunited. Meanwhile, your own operations will be transferred to Dong Hoi. Our naval facilities there are, after all, the true center of the objectives of Operation 34-A, concerning which you have already performed commendable work. Instead of surveying the work being done by the enemy in Danang through Operation 34-A, you will survey the effects of that work at Dong Hoi. We are almost certainly approaching a period when something will need to be done to obstruct the work of 34-A. All the more vital, this, as I devote myself to the work of keeping the Trail open. Our only other avenue to the South is by sea, in the Gulf. After your ‘death' at the hands of our soldiers, you will go to Dong Hoi.”

Le Duc Sy sat down. “I will need to consider your plan.”

Bui Tin, finally relaxed, sipped the last of his beer. “My dear Sy, you are not given to ‘considering' anything. Not even”—this was risky, Bui Tin thought hastily, but worth it—“impetuous marriages.”

Le Duc Sy spoke gravely. “If you mean that I married Lao Dai after a very brief courtship, I acknowledge this. If you are suggesting that she is other than the woman I desire as my wife, you misunderstand our marriage.”

“No, no. I am suggesting nothing of the sort. I honor your devotion to her. Even as I honor the devotion you have to our movement. But this is not merely
my
plan. It is
the
plan. You have no alternatives.”

Le Duc Sy laughed. His laughter came in two volleys: the first, general merriment at the maneuvering of his old friend. The second reflected his sudden understanding of the “alternatives.”

“Otherwise, I don't get shot in the battlefield with a dummy bullet. I get shot with live ammunition here in Hanoi. Correct?”

“Correct.”

They finished their beer. Bui Tin leaned over to his desk and pressed a button. In short order an elderly clerk knocked on the door and an orderly brought in two trays with hot meals and a bottle of wine.

“Notice the vintage, Sy—1954. The year of Dien Bien Phu. Amazing, what the French left behind.”

17

July 25, 1964

Senator Goldwater's Headquarters,

Washington, D.C.

Senator Goldwater and those three of his intimates who knew about “the general” who was supplying information clandestinely permitted themselves to laugh about it all, the helpful, sincere, anonymous “face” they called General X. It was late at night and they had talked at melancholy, frustrated length about the new vote-for-Johnson commercial. Drinks were passed about, and the drinks brought on organic, locker-room laughter. Barry Goldwater loved good company and good talk and he had a nice facility for taking a comic situation and carrying it to surrealistic lengths.

“I mean, do you suppose his wife is called
Mrs
. X?”

“Of
course
! And his oldest son is X major, the second boy is X minor, the third, X tertius,” Baroody said, never reluctant to exhibit his knowledge of classical constructions.

“What about his daughter?” Clif White, the political intimate and consultant, insisted on knowing.

There was hesitation. How to feminize “X”? Senator Goldwater said he supposed there was no alternative than to refer to her as “Little Miss X.”

Goldwater had won at the convention the preceding week with 228 more votes than the 655 needed to nominate him as Republican candidate for President. He leaned back in his chair and took a drink of bourbon. To Baroody: “Do you know, Bill, here we are receiving information from a general in the Defense Department and
we
do not know who he is! Our General X. I'm trying to think. In the last ninety days, has he misled us?”

No one could come up with any example, though several pieces of information he had passed on to Goldwater, Goldwater did not have the resources to verify. For instance, he had not been able himself to investigate the existence or the scope of Operation 34-A, which General X stressed was doing heavy work in the Gulf of Tonkin, virtually fingerprinting the locations and the characteristics of North Vietnamese installations. And now, tomorrow, Goldwater was scheduled to meet General X face to face.

Their only conversations had been over the telephone. Clif White or Bill Baroody would get the call—from which telephone, where situated, they did not know. General X would announce that he had information he thought the senator would want to have. Baroody or White, both authorized to make binding commitments on behalf of the candidate, would give an exact time and a private telephone number. At exactly that time, Senator Goldwater would himself answer the private telephone and converse with the general, making notes of the information he was being given.

The relationship could not have been initiated by the senator, and would not have been countenanced by him except for the odd way in which it had begun. It was at the funeral of General MacArthur in Norfolk. At the reception Mrs. MacArthur, the minute widow with the beautiful, stricken face who spoke in those comforting Southern accents one associates with loving aunts tending to the cares of helpless little children, signaled to him after her duties in the receiving line had been completed. A Coca-Cola and ham sandwich in hand, Goldwater went quickly to her side and she nudged him to the corner of the room. He leaned down in order to make out her quiet words.

What she said was that there was a general in the Pentagon who had been an admirer of her husband, whom he had served as a lieutenant colonel in the Korean campaign. That general was critically situated in the Pentagon and despaired over the developing situation in South Vietnam. The anonymous general was a great admirer of Senator Goldwater and wished to give him information that would enable him to affect public policy during the forthcoming campaign.

“Now heah, Senator, is the thing about it, and that's that the general wohn't under
any circumstances
let you know what his name is, an' I guess I can understand that, when I remember all the intriguin' done to mah general,” she tipped her head in obeisance in the direction of the crypt where her general had only just now been put to rest. So, she whispered, all she could say to the senator was that he must accept any telephone call he got from General X. And he was kindly to tell her—if he was willing to enter into this relationship—which single member of his staff would be advised of this “telephone pahtnaship, is how I think of it”—someone to whom the senator would say, Accept any calls from a man who announces himself as General Eggs. That was so that operators who received the call in the first place wouldn't be tempted to make fun of someone calling himself General X. If a new operator asked how he spelled his name, he would say, “E-G-G-S.” Whenever the widow had looked up at him for a reaction, Senator Goldwater simply blinked. Now he said, “Tell him to ask for Bill Baroody.”

“Is that B-a-r-o-o-d-y?”

He nodded.

She took his hand and gave it a warm little squeeze and said she now had to get back to her other guests.

There had been, since April, six conversations with General X, and in the conversations he had given Goldwater the information about Operation 34-A and about captured North Vietnamese plans to transport as many as 20,000 men per month down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, with supporting materiel. But in the exchange yesterday, General X had said that there was simply no alternative to arranging a personal meeting. What he now had to say to the candidate could not be said over the telephone and in any event might require a half hour's common probing.

“It's not easy for me to move around these days, General. It's easy enough for me to tell my own security to bug off, but there's usually a bunch of reporters waiting outside, following me wherever I go. You got any ideas?”

General X did. “I know that you are giving a speech tomorrow to the American Legion at the Armory. The speech is scheduled for eleven
A.M.
Arrive at ten-fifteen, and tell your host that you have arranged with a member of your staff to go over the speech with you and that he is meeting you in Room 24A—and you do not wish to be disturbed. Is that satisfactory?” Goldwater had said that yes, that was satisfactory.

The senator looked very tired. It had been a grueling fortnight, never mind his formal convention victory. At San Francisco the attack on him by the candidate around whom the opposition had consolidated had been deeply wounding. It helped that Governor William Scranton had sworn to him over the telephone that he had never laid eyes on the scurrilous letter Scranton's aides had written to Goldwater on Scranton's stationery, addressed “Dear Barry” and signed (by typewriter) “Bill.” The letter suggested that the entire Goldwater movement was in the hands of kooks and warmongers. Every delegate found a copy of that letter under his door the next morning; this generated wild rumors, huge resentments, a divided convention, a divided Republican Party, and augured a defeat in November.

The Johnson forces, sensing the possibility of an early knockout, had run a television commercial, the idea of press secretary Bill Moyers on which an inventive, expensive New York advertising agency had put the finishing touches. It showed a little girl in a sunny field of daisies. She began animatedly plucking petals from a daisy. As she plucked away, a male voice in the background began a countdown “… ten … nine … eight …” the voice becoming constantly stronger. The screen suddenly exploded and the child disappeared in a mushroom cloud. The voice concluded by urging voters to elect President Johnson. “These are the stakes: to make a world in which all of God's children can live, or go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die. Vote for President Johnson on November third. The stakes are too high for you to stay home.”

Goldwater had heard about the ad minutes after it was shown over NBC and his indignation reached such furious pitch that he went to the telephone and called President Johnson—who denied any prior knowledge of the ad, and said he would see to it that it did not get shown again. But at that point Barry Goldwater had ceased believing anything Lyndon Johnson said.

“More exactly,” Baroody corrected him, “you don't think something is true merely because LBJ
says
it's true. It might just
happen
to be true. That's the way to sum it up, isn't it?” Goldwater agreed. Yes, that was a better way to put it.