Tucker's Last Stand (9 page)

“Tell me about it.”

Tucker turned his head away, as though to listen more intently to the chanteuse, who was singing—it was inevitable, at least once during each of her three forty-minute sessions—“La Vie en Rose.”

“Tucker. I mean it. I want to hear about it. If you don't tell me, that—special thing between us will, maybe, go away.” Her eyes expressed at once command and entreaty.

Tucker took a little sip from his drink.

“By early May 1954—we're talking about almost exactly ten years ago—we had the Huks pretty well in a corner. Their hold on countryside Philippine peasants was slipping. Magsaysay—he was president—had done a lot to restore confidence in the Philippine economy, and the results were being felt. For instance the anti-Huk farmers in Mindanao were really beginning to pitch in. That, plus the kind of physical protection we were providing under Colonel Lansdale. One day at breakfast Lansdale's bodyguard brought a sealed envelope into his tent—we were operating in the field. The colonel had taken it from a campesino who said he had been paid 100 pesetas to deliver the envelope to the colonel. It was a message from the big Huk honcho, Luis Taruc. It said he was willing to negotiate an end to the hostilities, but would only do so in conversation with one man. And—he named me.”

“Why?”

“We gave that a lot of thought. I was twenty-eight years old, but I had been used on radio a lot because I speak Spanish, and the Huk leaders were brought up on Spanish—everybody in the Philippines who went to school knew Spanish in those days. But because of my broadcasts, which went out as ‘Don Libertad'—Mr. Freedom—I had become a spokesman of the anti-Huk forces, and in ten months my voice had become as well known in Mindanao Province as El Gallinero's. He was the Philippine's Frank Sinatra.”

“The folk singer, balladeer? I've heard his records.”

Tucker nodded.

“So?”

“So, Lansdale called me in and asked if I would play along. I said”—he shrugged his shoulders—“sure. Now: That letter was very specific about the proposed meeting. Taruc said that his conditions for ending the civil war would be given to me in three stages, and Stage Two wouldn't be divulged unless he had got an okay on Stage One. And he would need to get that okay within twelve hours because, he said, he was taking great risks. He was acting without the knowledge of the Soviet agent in his headquarters, a guy called Compañero José, who, if he smelled out what was going on, would have Taruc assassinated. If Colonel Lansdale would go along with Stage One, Taruc would take the initiative and ‘dispose' of Compañero José and proceed to the next stage in the negotiations. Total secrecy was critical, and there could be no use of radios, since one of Compañero José's staff always monitored radio transmissions from Huk territory.

“So Colonel Lansdale would need to be situated at a specified point, where ‘Don Libertad' could go directly from the conference, spell out the terms, and get back a yes or no. If the answer was yes, then my regular eight
A.M.
broadcast would begin, ‘Good morning, Filipino friends of liberty, this is Don Libertad bringing you your morning report. First the weather: Sunny and clear.' If the answer was no, I'd use the same opening words, and then say about the weather, ‘Local storms expected.' Now if Lansdale agreed to go ahead with the meeting, I was to say on my evening broadcast at six
P.M
., ‘Good evening, Filipino friends of liberty. This is Don Libertad bringing you your nightly report. Are you listening? I hope so.' If Colonel Lansdale would not agree, then I would leave out the phrase, ‘I hope so.' Complicated, Lao?”

“No, not really. But I, do you say, smell a rat?”

“Yes. So did I. Which is why I spent most of that night working on my jeep. I didn't tell you that if we agreed, he also required that I would set out alone in a jeep beginning at a designated crossroads about 150 kilometers from our headquarters (they knew our general location) at exactly seven
P.M.
Head south on Camino 83, and a ‘vehicle'—they didn't specify what kind—would come down from one of the many roads that feed into 83. It would have a three-star-general's badge next to the license plate. I was to follow it. It would take me to Taruc.”

Lao Dai's nervousness was not simulated. She was a shade paler. “Yes,” she said apprehensively.

“Okay. I go through all the motions. It took almost three hours to get to the crossroads, and Colonel Lansdale took off to a rendezvous point nearby where I would meet him later. Past the crossroads, a couple of miles down the road, a battered old van, looked like a school bus, comes barreling down a hill from my right, hitting the road directly in front of me. I spotted the three-star badge. A few miles farther, it turns left. I follow. There is a lot of twisting and turning, up and down that hilly stuff in Mindanao. We come finally to a small village, maybe a dozen houses, a little square, and, at the end, a church. The truck stops behind the church, out of sight of any of the houses, and the driver and his companion walk toward me, both wearing fatigues, and you could see the bulge where their pistols were. The lead guy—he must have been all of twenty years old, never mind the beard—says, ‘Don Libertad?'

“‘
Sí
.'”

“They said in Spanish they would need to search me and the jeep. I said okay and they frisked me, then looked carefully inside the jeep, then opened the hood, gave a quick look, slammed it shut and motioned me to follow them. I did, right into the church, using the rear entrance. Luis Taruc was all alone, sitting in the sacristy with a newspaper. I'd have recognized him, but he introduced himself anyway. Ever seen a picture of him?”

“No.”

“No beard, but a Pancho Villa–style mustache almost as wide as the hat he was wearing, never mind that we were inside a church. Big bastard, maybe two hundred pounds, two front teeth missing. Under one eye is a scar—splotchy scar, as though the doctor that patched him up wanted to leave a big fingerprint. He spoke in rapid Spanish snatches, then paused, then another splash. Like, ‘I'm-glad-you-agreed-to-come-Don-Libertad. Pause. I-have-listened-to-your-broadcasts-and-you-are-a-very-persuasive-fellow-so-many-fascists-are. That kind of thing, for maybe a half hour. I said as little as I could get away with without being rude.” Tucker paused. “Interesting point, Lao, don't you think? It's okay to act hostile, that's expected. But you mustn't be rude—that's different. After all, this was a negotiating session. It was getting dark, and he used up maybe one half hour. He said, ‘We've always known you weren't a Filipino, though your Spanish accent's pretty good. But I wanted to deal with someone who worked for Lansdale, not Magsaysay. Don't ask me why; I have my reasons.'”

Tucker paused to refill his glass.

“What Stage One amounted to was: Amnesty for him and for six other Huk leaders—he gave me their names on a slip of paper. I tried to get from him some idea of what Stages Two and Three would amount to. Nothing doing. No further discussions until he had an affirmative on the amnesty question. Now, Taruc said, he knew that Colonel Lansdale didn't have the authority to grant amnesty on his own. That would have to come after a conference with President Magsaysay back in Manila. What Taruc wanted, before he would agree to reconvene on Stages Two and Three, was a signal from Lansdale that he would
recommend
amnesty. Did I understand? Yes, I said, I understood. And Lansdale could reach that decision in the field; he did not have to go back to Manila to make up his own mind. I told Taruc I was acting only as a messenger, and that, as agreed, if Lansdale was willing to make the recommendation, I would use the agreed all-clear signal on my eight
A.M.
broadcast. Taruc nodded, got up, went to the door and called his guards. ‘Take Don Libertad back to his car.'

“It was very dark, and I needed to be guided back to Route 83. When I got there, my guide stuck out his hand, indicating the direction back to the crossroads. At the crossroads, I turned right and looked at the odometer. At exactly two-point-three miles, I would find the left turn down the dusky road; after that, three and a half miles to the traveling headquarters Lansdale and his little staff had come to, over a hundred miles from the field headquarters.

“I made my turn and looked back. No lights, nothing. But I had two radios stitched into the side seat and had them both on, one set to Channel A, the other to Channel B. And I heard the voice. ‘
Ha volteado. Izquierda. Camino cuatro
.' ‘He's turned left, on Road Number Four.' Oh shit. I drove fast, looking for something I could hide behind—the right kind of tree, a stone wall. I spotted something, not perfect but I was in a hurry. I turned off my lights and opened the hood. With a flashlight in my mouth it took me only a couple of minutes to assemble the machine gun I had hidden in the engine compartment. I had its parts tucked in here and there—the barrel looked like a lug-nut wrench for changing tires. Under the chassis I had more than a thousand rounds of .30-caliber ammunition and the flare. I ran to the low stone wall—took me three trips to haul my equipment—grabbed a couple of loose boulders and piled them up to elevate the wall a foot or so. I waited.

“Not long—maybe six, seven minutes. The big van stopped behind my car. I was maybe fifty yards away from the road, and I couldn't hear what was being said. But then someone came out from behind the truck. I could see his rifle in the headlights of the truck as he walked slowly up to my jeep. He opened the door—and that triggered my parachute flare.

“Goddamn, those things can be beautiful. The whole fucking area lit up like the stage of Radio City. And out of the truck—one miserable truck—a whole goddamn
platoon
of armed men. Forty-four that we know of. I began firing. I fired—man, did I fire, almost without pausing, maybe four, five minutes. Then there was no sign of life. But I wasn't going to take a chance. So I waited—until dawn. Then I cradled the machine gun in my arms and crawled over there on hands and knees. I could hear some moaning. A couple of them were still alive. But nothing else. If there was a survivor, he had taken off. I got into my jeep. Nothing doing. Bullet holes had pierced the gas tank. So—I walked. Took me just over an hour. Got there while Colonel Lansdale was having breakfast. I went into his tent and sat down and said, ‘Any more messages this morning from Taruc, Colonel?'”

Lao Dai looked up at him. “What—what had Taruc planned to do?”

“Kill Colonel Lansdale and his immediate staff. Only way to do this was to lure him to a point outside his headquarters. By following me, they'd know for sure Lansdale was where he was supposed to be.”

“I hope the colonel was … grateful.”

“I got a medal.”

“Let's go home. I'm scared.”

“Not of me?”

“No. Just scared. It is the opposite. I want—you. I want to feel your life, deep inside me.” In the taxi she said nothing, but clutched his hand. In bed she embraced him as if she alone stood between him and the surrounding enemy.

9

July 2, 1964

Columbus, Ohio

Barry Goldwater was by nature a friendly man, and those of his aides in charge of scheduling despaired over his inclination to interrupt a scheduled walking tour in order to engage almost anyone in discussion. He made, instantaneously, distinctions in his dealings with people who wanted to question him. Those who accosted him simply to adore—and there were many of these—got the friendly handshake, nothing more. Granted, it “feels good,” as one woman told a reporter who was following the candidate, “to shake his hand. Like a movie star,” she went on. “Is there anybody better-looking than he is? Not John Wayne, not Gary Cooper, not anybody. If Fort Apache were being attacked, I'd like General Goldwater there—and you can quote me if you want,” she told the reporter testily. “You and your types would surrender, first thing.”

Those who came to him to ask questions-on-the-run got back answers-on-the-run. Most questions asked of a candidate, he had explained to Fred Anderson over a drink of bourbon a few days after his young speechwriter came to work for him, almost have to be answered by clichés. “Look, somebody stops you, Freddy, and says, ‘Senator Goldwater, if you become President, will you protect Quemoy and Matsu?' I mean, the Quemoy and Matsu islands are protected by Taiwan, and we have a commitment to protect Taiwan. But if I say, ‘Of course. We're already committed,' that person thinks you're not really leveling with him, so you have to say, ‘I've always thought Quemoy and Matsu have been symbols of Free China. Dick Nixon thought the same thing four years ago, I agreed with him then, and I agree with him now.' What have I actually said? Nothing.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But that's politics, and politics is my profession, so I'm not going to criticize it, am I?”

Then there was the questioner who was antagonistic. Here Goldwater would immediately distinguish between the two varieties of opposition. The first was inquisitively antagonistic. With them he would linger as long as he could, in particular if they were students. Fred Anderson, in his weekly letter to his mother, told of the young man in Tallahassee who had asked Goldwater why he had opposed the civil rights bill.

He delivered a little sermonette distinguishing between opposition to civil rights and opposition to a particular civil rights bill. “Hell,” he said, “I'm in favor of a lot of things I couldn't vote for. I'd like to make the head of the Ku Kluxers go live with a Negro family—I know the family I have in mind—and wait on table and learn some manners. I'd like to sentence a dozen congressmen I can think of to spending thirty days filling out some of the forms issued by the regulatory agencies. I'd like to vote for a law requiring every ambassador from East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Hungary to dress in red suits when they are more than one block away from the United Nations. But—see—I don't have the right to do that and I don't have the right to tell Mrs. Jones she has to rent her room to a Negro if she doesn't want to. I've opposed segregation since I was twenty years old.”