Tucker's Last Stand (7 page)

It was all there, they gloomily conceded. A description of the Soviet and Chinese machinery that the Trail would need to be able to handle, specifications of the necessary width of the Trail, the essential built-in detours to cope with the unbridgeable, with weather contingencies, with bombs. Colonel Nguyen had anticipated in due course heavy American bombs and intended to be prepared with adequate antiaircraft defenses. There would be underground barracks, workshops, hospitals, storage facilities, fuel depots. He anticipated platoons of drivers, mechanics, radio operators, ordnance experts, traffic managers, doctors, nurses. It was the intention of the architect of this Trail, a full description of which the enemy surely had in hand, to expedite the passage of 20,000 North Vietnamese soldiers per month upon the Trail's completion. And yes, that detail too, 20,000 North Vietnamese soldiers per month, appeared on the document.

Ho Chi Minh turned to Frédéric Gruyère, the archaeologist who had defected from the French and served now as principal monitor of the news as it came in from the French press and from his myriad contacts in the French intelligence community. How would President Johnson react on seeing the Trail document?

Gruyère said that, after all, the Americans had already begun surveying the area, obviously in anticipation of infiltration through a much heavier use of it than at present, but 20,000 troops per month could only sound like an invading army.

Ho nodded. He had always done so ceremoniously. Bui Tin found himself wondering whether he nodded in that way when receiving ultimatums from the French. (Would he nod in that way to someone who ordered him executed? Probably.) But Ho also kept his own counsel. Instead of replying to Gruyère, he asked for his current estimate of the political situation in the United States. Gruyère replied that it had not changed, in respect of Vietnam. There was solid support from both parties for continued aid to the enemy, and President Johnson regularly went on with his stream of public pronouncements to the effect that the United States would stand by its “allies” to “curb Communist expansion.” The party of Republicans would almost surely nominate a senator named Barry Goldwater, a most bellicose man who would look for the least provocation to move in the direction of converting the American military cadre now in South Vietnam into a full fighting force.

General Giap said that it was his impression that President Johnson would move in the same direction.

Gruyère said that yes, this was so, but President Johnson—he looked over at Ho, pausing very briefly—was not as decisive as the senator from Arizona, and had many conflicting concerns.

Once again, Ho bowed his head. “It will be a long war,” he said, his lips parted in a half smile. He turned first to General Giap, then to Colonel Nguyen, then to Colonel Tin, with just the faintest tilt of his head. They rose. Ho Chi Minh had dismissed them.

Ho told Gruyère to summon Xuan Thuy, who acted as his foreign minister. He was there immediately, coming in from his office next door. Ho asked his foreign minister whether he had told the Canadian member of the International Control Commission that the government of North Vietnam would reply to the American overture on a given date.

“I didn't say when we would reply, Excellency. I just listened.” Xuan Thuy looked up at Gruyère and back to Ho. Did the President wish him to repeat what he had been told? In front of Gruyère? Ho blinked an assent.

“President Johnson made an advance through Canada. If you will stop the war against South Vietnam he promises you a vast program of economic aid to rebuild the entire country, to restore it after all the damage done in the current conflict and in the conflict with the French.”

Ho looked over at Gruyère. “Is there any public knowledge of this initiative?”

Gruyère shook his head. “None.”

Ho turned back to Xuan Thuy. “You will almost certainly be hearing again from the Canadian ambassador. Do not approach him. Wait until he comes again to you. When he comes, which I think will be very soon, he will no doubt tell you that U.S. Intelligence has picked up a document that suggests we are preparing to move as many as 20,000 soldiers per month down the Trail when it is built up.”

Xuan Thuy nodded. Yes, he said. He knew about the captured document.

“You are to tell him the document is a forgery. The work of provocateurs in the South. When the Southern patriots take over the country from the colonialist stooges, the forgers will be sought out and specially punished.”

Xuan Thuy bowed. There was a trace of a smile. He had been ordered to say just the kind of thing he enjoyed saying when negotiating with representatives of the imperialist world.

7

June 15, 1964

Saigon, South Vietnam

The first part of their mission completed, Blackford Oakes and Tucker Montana were back in sticky, crowded, volatile Saigon. It was late in the afternoon when they checked in at the hotel, going directly to the restaurant, where they ate, drank, and agreed that they looked forward to sleep in air-conditioned quarters before the meeting the next day with Rufus and Colonel Strauss.

In the late spring of 1964 Saigon seemed to be attacked more heavily by domestic than foreign problems. The assassination of the leader, Diem, had been followed by civil turmoil, with one general or junta replacing another at dizzying speed. A determined war initiated by the North was a strategic concern worth worrying about, but it was hardly the dominating concern of the day to the South Vietnamese: a domestic insurrectionary movement was not gaining ground, the South Vietnamese army, the ARVN, was in the field, doing its business. And Saigon was profiting as the center of geopolitical attention. Security within Saigon was not a problem of any magnitude. Yes, of course there would be spies in Saigon, just as there were spies in Berlin and Singapore and Hong Kong. But nothing to warrant elaborate disciplinary procedures, let alone curfews, let alone curtailment of the kind of life appropriate to besieged cities. The restaurants and hotels and nightclubs and brothels were prospering, and life for many Vietnamese and foreigners could be sweet, if only the Westerners could get used to the heat, and stop worrying about the never-ending anarchy within the government. But surely that too would go away, perhaps under the latest general, who spoke frequently over the radio, though to a halfhearted listenership more intent on workaday concerns, on inflation, schooling, food, lodging, entertainment, than security. Saigon was an informal, loose, open city. If a visitor had arrived there knowing nothing of politics, he might spend months there before discovering that a civil war made possible by foreign aggression was going on.

Leaving the hotel restaurant, Blackford depressed the elevator button, sleepily staring at the floor indicator. Montana said he thought he would take a walk before turning in. “Maybe just say a quick hello to a girl I met last time I was in town, nice little thing, pretty, and very, very hospitable.”

“You just said a half hour ago you couldn't wait to go to bed.”

“Didn't say whose bed.”

Blackford smiled. “I understand a lot of nice women in Saigon are good at quick hellos. Even at protracted hellos.… By the way, Tucker”—he addressed Major Montana for the first time by his Christian name—“you did me a favor on the field today. Thanks.”

Montana waved his hand dismissively. “It was your expedition, but I was in charge of getting you in and out; couldn't very well bring you back dead.” He lowered his head for a moment. “Bad, the copilot. At least he was unmarried, I found out.”

“Yes,” Blackford said.

The elevator door opened. Blackford gave his companion a lazy mini-salute, went into the elevator and on reaching his bedroom made a quick decision: He would go instantly to sleep rather than fight the fatigue; set the alarm for six and then work on his notes. Shortly, he was bouncing about lazily and happily in the green pastures of heavy slumber when the little tinkle began. His light and carefree gamboling was infinitely pleasurable—he found that he could jump about as though there were hardly such a thing as gravity, bounding from this little oasis of trees and flowers to that one a half mile away, as fleetfootedly as a ballerina and with the powers of Superman.

What
was
that little tinkling bell? It was beginning to annoy him. He ignored it in exchange for leaping over to explore another green corner in the vast garden.… And then suddenly the fairyland disappeared, evaporated. He woke up. It was the telephone.

The
telephone
.

He looked at his watch. It was not quite midnight. He reached out for the receiver, brought it down to pillow level and said, “Yes?”

“Are you Mr. Greyburn?”

Mr. Greyburn
! Sally! “Yes.” He jolted up to a sitting position. In a few seconds she was there, loud and clear, only the slightest background feel of over-come-in-please button-pushing somewhere along the line, perhaps a short-wave radio operator in the picture.

“Darling, were you asleep?”

“No. No, not at all, darling.” The connection was perfect.

“You are an unaccomplished liar. I don't know how you succeed, given your line of work. You evidently forget that I have heard you speak when you wake up and I am seven inches away, not seven thousand miles away. I
know
that sound.”

“Yes, I remember,” Blackford said. “And I don't like it when you keep yourself seven inches away. I find that extremely snotty. How do you say snotty in Spanish?”

“Er …
desinclinado
.”

“I don't believe you. You are an unaccomplished fake. An academic sciolist.”

“Oh? You're talking to a Ph.D. It is I—not you—who lectures in Spanish at the University of Mexico on Jane Austen; who, by the way, got on very well in her novels without having to use the word
snot
—”

“I bet she didn't get very far without using the word ‘disinclined,' because my guess is that
desinclinado
translates to ‘disinclined' in English.”

“Oh Blacky, I do miss you.”

“I miss you, love. How is the little monster?”

“He had his second birthday yesterday: He is two months old. He is quite beautiful. Just like his father.…” There was the moment's silence. Blackford quickly broke in.

“Have any trouble getting through to me?”

“Yes, actually. I put in the call two hours ago thinking that was a pretty safe time to find you still awake. And then when I got through to the operator and asked for ‘Mr. Greyburn' she said there wasn't anybody there with that name, and of course I remembered, and had to go to your telegram to get the right room number. You are back from the bush, as you put it?”

“Yes—I'll have to be a little vague about that.”

“So what now?”

“I'm not absolutely sure. But just possibly I'll be going to Washington for this reason and that, and when I do I'm going to put in for a little Frito-time south of the border.”

“That would be so nice. I want you to meet your future stepson. Do you remember his name—Daddy?”

Blackford panicked. She had told it to him first in the letter announcing his birth then in the second letter, which he got just before he left Washington. CIA agents are not supposed to forget important details. He would try to bluff his way out of it.

“I do think you might have named him after our Director. John McCone Partridge Morales. That would have been very nice. Or, to show that people don't necessarily just fade away when they leave us, Allen Dulles Partridge Morales.”

“That is very funny. Maybe you'd have liked Anthony Strangelove Partridge Morales.”

“You always think we people want war, when what we want is peace.”—He blessed himself that his ruse had worked. “Anthony” was the kid's name. Antonio, he supposed, named after his father.

“We won't go into that old subject again, not on my nickel.”

“How much does it cost, phoning from Mexico City?”

“Since this is Sunday, the day on which when you were younger you used to worship, the rates are only fifty percent.”

“Fifty percent of what?—and no cracks about my religion.”

“Of a hundred and fifty pesos. Seventy-five pesos is six, just over six dollars.”

“I will send you a money order.”

“You forget. I am wealthy.”

Blackford paused for a moment. He decided to be serious. “Antonio's will probated already?”

“Yes. I knew it would be substantial. I didn't know how substantial it would be.”

“I'm very glad for that, darling, I truly am. That means you can look after me in my old age.”

“My problem has been looking after you in your young age.”

He laughed, as did she, and they cuddled together, over a distance of seven thousand miles, as a growing number of Americans were now doing, from one place or another, talking over the telephone to wives, husbands, lovers, and when he put down the phone and eased back to sleep, there were no green pastures there waiting for him, just Professor Sally Partridge.

They were to meet in a safe house. In Saigon, June 1964, Blackford reckoned, if you knocked on the wrong door you would probably be admitted into a CIA safe house. A young man in khakis, a pistol on his hip, asked Blackford and Montana for a password. He then took them upstairs where Rufus and Colonel Abraham Strauss were waiting for them. More properly, they were expecting them. (In the CIA world nobody waits because everyone is on time, or has been kidnapped.) Blackford had been told that the appointment was for eight minutes past ten, and it was now nine minutes past ten.

Laying eyes on Rufus was always a restorative. As usual, he was formally dressed, though not, Blackford was glad to notice, in blue-black. Although the rural Vietnamese wore black pajamas, that costume was now regularly associated with the Vietcong. The garb made them inconspicuous in the dark as they traveled the countryside, threatening and then murdering uncooperative South Vietnamese village chiefs, magistrates, small landholders, teachers. He greeted Rufus with the closest you could come, with Rufus, to a bear hug, which he would endure from his most intimate friends, always provided there was no substantial body contact. Rufus said, “Mr. Montana,” and then introduced them: “Colonel Strauss, from the Aberdeen Proving Ground.”