Tucker's Last Stand (34 page)

“Was I hurt? Darling, you know that I am stationed in Hué. The gooks have some pretty effective firepower, but they haven't yet developed a machine gun that will fire three hundred and fifty miles.”

“Oh, honey, that's the best news I've heard in months!”

The Army personnel, Goldwater noted, were on the one hand reassuring about Bien Hoa (“It was just a stunt, Kate. Like when Jimmy jumped into the pool from the roof, you remember? He didn't try it twice”), on the other hand detectably discouraged. He knew then that the shock conveyed by the headlines in America registered a shock genuinely felt in the field. He was musing on the implications of Bien Hoa when Peggy called him in. She smiled: “For the festivities.”

“Yeah.” He kissed her, in the privacy of his radio room, with heartfelt passion.

Goldwater entered the living room. And, unexpectedly, the fourteen people in it, his staff and a few old friends, stood up. As they might have done if he had entered as President-elect of the United States. He had to turn his head to conceal the sudden mist. “Hey,” he said, addressing himself to nobody in particular, “let's not make the concession speech till tomorrow, when nobody will be listening. I don't want to hear LBJ pay me compliments. Might gag.”

Denis Kitchel answered him. “Oh. But that won't make the press outside go away. So, if you change your mind they'll be there.”

“I won't change my mind,” Senator Goldwater said, a glass of bourbon in his hand, sitting down in the armchair left vacant for him opposite the large television set.

Four hours later, the cheering in the room was limited to cheers for Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Arizona. He had carried Fredonia.

36

November 5, 1964

Savannakhet, Laos

Tucker spent two days at the inn with Bui Tin and the two technicians who had flown the 250 miles from Hanoi to Savannakhet on the chartered flight when the word was passed up that Montana was prepared to cooperate. The technicians arrived in the early afternoon of the day following Tucker's long evening with Bui Tin. Tucker had occupied himself during the morning making sketches of the evasive equipment that would substantially nullify the whole of the Igloo White operation except, as he explained to Bui Tin, on those occasions when troops traveling down the Trail failed to spot a Spikebuoy, shield its transmission in time, and penetrate its frequency. “This isn't going to protect everything you've got, Colonel.”

“I did not expect that it would, Major.” Bui Tin spoke deferentially, as always.

Late in the morning Tucker said he would need some proper drafting paper. This was not readily available at the Lao-tse Inn, so Bui Tin gave careful instructions to the driver, who an hour or so later came back with it. He had found, he said, the small supply store that furnished routine provisions to Nakhon Phanom, forty-two miles away. Tucker found himself sketching on paper on which appeared, in tiny print at the bottom right, “U.S. Government issue.” He bit his lip. He would need to get used to the paradoxes. Already had, in a way. Since making up his mind the night before, he had not tortured himself about it. He continued with his work.

The Russian who came in from Hanoi knew only German, so that his questions to Tucker needed to be relayed through his colleague, the North Vietnamese technician, who also spoke German. Within ten minutes Tucker knew that he was dealing, in the case of the gook, with a total naïf. The Russian's background, on the other hand, was considerable—but oh, light-years behind what Tucker Montana was talking about, so that he had to proceed slowly, spelling out every step of the technological machinations by which his powerful offensive system could be cheated of its prey. The last day was devoted to doing detailed sketches, with careful attention given to the three radiating elements that extended about 24 inches, enclosed within the flyscreen, and explicit instruction on how to tap the antenna with the frequency analyzer. These instruments, the Russian said, were available in rudimentary shape in the Soviet Union, but if the major could acquire one from the CIA and slip it to Bui Tin, that would of course make the work of refining it easier. Tucker nodded, making certain, by his detailed designs, that whatever the delay in getting their hands on an American sequencer, the technicians in Moscow could get on with the development of an adequate facsimile.

By dinnertime the job was done. There was nothing left to do until the airplane the next day. The flight to Saigon left at 11:15
A.M.

“With your permission, Major, we will leave on our charter before you, at ten.”

“Sure, Colonel.” Tucker did not care if they left at ten that night. He would make an excuse to Bui Tin, eat alone, and spend the evening reading. He hadn't let on to anybody that he had yet to read
Gone with the Wind
, and it was only when Lao Dai, who had just finished it, pressed him to help her analyze it that he confessed. Without hesitation, she had stuffed the fat paperback into his briefcase.

And that was only three days ago, Tucker thought. He agreed to have a cognac later in the evening with Bui Tin, and they met in the colonel's suite, without the technicians, at 10:30.

Bui Tin had given much thought to what, exactly, to say at the end. There must not be a hint of gratitude in the sense of favors done—quite wrong: Why should Montana do Bui Tin a favor?—But something, just a trace, of idealism shared. So that when he had poured the two drinks, Bui Tin lifted his hand and said, “Let us drink to a world without nuclear devastation.” That sentiment surely ran no risk, and of course he knew, after the careful briefings from Lao Dai, that this theme was the fastest and surest way to Tucker's conscience.

Tucker raised his glass. “That's good enough for me, Colonel.”

Something personal was needed, Bui Tin thought. He knew for certain only that Tucker would return to Lao Dai. He did not know whether he would now resign from the service, or continue in his job as if—as if nothing had happened. He eased into the subject carefully.

“Please give my cousin, Lao Dai, my warmest regards.”

“Oh, I'll do that, Colonel, don't you worry.”

A little probe. “Will she be returning to the United States with you?”

Tucker was startled. He had given the subject no thought, he reminded himself. But why should he have, since up until now he had thought himself as stuck in South Vietnam and Nakhon Phanom into the foreseeable future. “That's for down the line, Colonel.”

“Why of course, I forgot. You are obviously needed here, in Nakhon Phanom.”

“Actually,” Tucker said—he was almost talking to himself—“actually, I'm not really needed. They've got all my ideas, the equipment is tested, it's just a matter of production and coordination. They don't really need me for that, though they think they do. But here I am, and here Lao Dai is, and as long as we're both together in the same place it doesn't matter, I guess.”

Bui Tin nodded, as though he had expended his interest in the subject. He began one of his rambling historical disquisitions on the history and culture of the region, as if determined to complete what he had begun in the car. Tucker's mind was on other matters, though he sat there with the fine cognac, puffing on his cigar, producing his perfect smoke rings, and occasionally grunting this or that to suggest that he was following the colonel's anthropological lecture. When his cigar was finished, he took advantage of a cadence in the colonel's thought to rise and say, “That was very interesting, thank you very much.”

Bui Tin rose, and bowed his head. There was a moment's pause.

Shake hands? The hell with it—Tucker extended his hand, and Bui Tin took it. There was no pressure exerted by either party. It was a formality.

The following morning, from his window, Tucker saw the three men departing in the same car that had fetched him. He would be following them out to the airport in an hour and a half. He had made his own arrangements with the inn to hire a car and driver.

Colonel Bui Tin let the technicians go through airport procedures ahead of him. They went through Laotian Customs and Immigration and would wait in the boarding area, or perhaps even inside the plane with the pilots, until Bui Tin joined them. This he would do quickly. Except as required, he did not want the pilots and the technicians in each other's company. No loose talk. Having waited ten minutes, he opened the car door. His suitcase had been taken by the Vietnamese technician and loaded onto the charter plane with his own. Bui Tin needed only to complete his passenger manifest card, go out through Customs and Immigration and board the charter.

He bent over the counter, writing out his name, address, birth date, profession, passport number and expiration date—information he had carefully memorized from the passport taken from the manager of a Hanoi state purchasing company. As he wrote out his name, dashing it off as if familiar, there was an explosion. It sounded on his right, outside the main airport shed. Bui Tin threw himself on the floor. So did the dozen other men and women in the shed, whether behind the counters or on the passengers' side. After a brief moment, there was a chorus of shouting and yelling. Two airport guards rushed to the site of the explosion. In a minute one of them entered and said something in Thai. Bui Tin looked over and saw the passenger agent standing now, brushing off her clothes. He took it to be the all clear, stood up and, showing no emotion, completed his form, handing it to the agent. He leaned down to pick up his briefcase, but it was not there.

Agitated, he calculated:
The chances of its recovery are minimal
. In it were photographic copies of the Spikebuoy manual, taken from Lao Dai's photographs. All the work the major had done on the counter-Igloo operation lay safely with the technicians, who were on board the airplane or in the boarding area. His face pale, he turned to the agent. “Are we all right?”

“I do not know, sir, when Security will give us clearance to proceed.” Security did so only after the arrival of central police who inspected the bomb that had sat under a bush alongside the terminal building, evidently detonated by radio signal. It had caused no damage. A search of everyone in the area revealed nothing incriminating. One hour later, Bui Tin and the two technicians were airborne on their chartered DC-3.

A few minutes later, Tucker Montana arrived. He inquired into the causes of the excitement and was told.

One more bomb, more or less, he said to himself without concern as he filled out his passenger form. He waited, seated on a single chair behind the little newsstand. He would prefer not to spot one of his colleagues from Nakhon Phanom coincidentally bound on the same flight to Saigon. He would of course tell any such person that he had been on a hunting vacation, though probably his colleague would wonder why he had not bothered to drop in at their facility while in the area. Tucker planned to return to Nakhon Phanom, but only after a day or two with Lao Dai, decompressing. He would deceive Blackford, talk only about the hunt, and say, Yes, he planned to return to work. He would try to persuade Blackford to keep his mouth shut about Lao Dai, promising in return to try to get her to defect to the South.

But no one came that he had ever seen before, with the exception of the young man who did the crossword puzzles and oohed over the family album. He was evidently bound back to Saigon, having done whatever business he was here to do.

In a piston plane, not a jet, it was a substantial flight, two hours and a half to fly the 360 miles across southern Laos and eastern Cambodia into Saigon, perched there on top of the Mekong Delta. Tucker was drained of strength, just as he remembered finding himself at the end of those sixteen-hour workdays at Los Alamos. He was stirred quietly by the thought of a warm, relaxed evening with Lao Dai. He would of course not tell her what he had done—Bui Tin had reassured him that no one would learn of his complicity from Hanoi—merely that he had listened to Bui Tin's line of argument, that he had found it persuasive, and that he would do his best to introduce her cousin's arguments in the circles he moved in. After all, she had said time and time again that all she wanted was for Tucker to
listen;
now he could safely say that, after all, he had spent two and one-half days with her cousin. Could anyone beat that for listening? He smiled as he reflected on the satisfied expression on her face when he especially pleased her.

At the safe house Blackford tore the receiver off the hook seconds after it had begun its ring.

“Yes. Alphonse?”

“Confirmed. He is on the eleven-fifteen to Saigon.”

“Okay. Now listen, when he gets off the plane, you stick close to him. If he waits for a bag, you wait for a bag. Come out of the airport right behind him. As soon as he gets outside, I'll collar him and tell him to come on in with you and me to the Citroën. I'll have it parked close. He trusts me, but I don't want to approach him while he's still in the airport waiting for a bag. Don't want to give him time to think. You got it?”

“
Entendu
.”

They were coming down. Tucker Montana held his nose and blew through it, easing the strain on his ears. Saigon looked awfully hot, compared to life on those nice hills in Thailand–Laos.

He walked down the narrow gangway and into the familiar airport, which seemed to grow in size every time he landed. He grabbed a copy of
Stars & Stripes
, which he scanned as he waited for his bag. Well whaddaya-know, Lyndon Johnson had been elected for a full term as President! There was a front-page picture of Goldwater, with the caption: “The Candidate who refused to concede until the next day.” Probably had a hangover from celebrating, Tucker thought. Celebrating that he wouldn't have to handle this mess. But it was a good thing Goldwater was beaten. He was sure as hell likelier than Lyndon to bring on a world war.