“Yes, I suppose it is.”
The KGB rezident in Hanoi had General-Major rank, and his job was mainly that of spying on his country’s putative allies. What were their real objectives? Was their supposed estrangement with China real or a sham? Would they cooperate with the Soviet Union when and if the war came to a successful conclusion? Might they allow the Soviet Navy use of a base after the Americans left? Was their political determination really as solid as they said it was? Those were all questions whose answers he thought he had, but orders from Moscow and his own skepticism about everyone and everything compelled him to keep asking. He employed agents within the CPVN, the country’s Foreign Ministry, and elsewhere, Vietnamese whose willingness to give information to an ally would probably have meant death—though to be politic about it, the deaths would be disguised “suicides” or “accidents” because it was in neither country’s interest to have a formal breach. Lip-service was even more important in a socialist country than a capitalist one, the General knew, because symbols were far easier to produce than reality.
The enciphered dispatch on his desk was interesting, all the more so since it did not give him direct guidance on what to do about it. How like the Moscow bureaucrats! Always quick to meddle in matters that he was able to handle himself, now they didn’t know what to do—but they were afraid to do nothing. So they stuck him with it.
He knew about the camp, of course. Though he ran a military-intelligence operation, he had people in the office of the attaché who reported to him as well. The KGB watched everyone, after all; that was their job. Colonel Grishanov was using irregular methods, but he was reporting good results, better than the General’s own office got from these little savages. Now the Colonel had come up with the boldest idea of all. Instead of letting the Vietnamese kill the prisoners in due course, bring them home to Mother Russia. It was brilliant in its way, and the KGB general was trying to decide if he’d endorse the idea to Moscow, where this decision would surely be kicked up to ministerial, or perhaps even Politburo level. On the whole, he thought that the idea had real merit ... and that decided matters.
As entertaining as it might be for the Americans to rescue their people with this BOXWOOD GREEN operation, as much as it might show the Vietnamese again that they should cooperate more closely with the Soviet Union, that they really were a client state, it would also mean that the knowledge locked in those American minds would be lost to his country, and it was knowledge they must have.
How long, he wondered, could he let this one wait? The Americans moved quickly, but not that quickly. The mission had been approved at White House level only a week or so earlier. All bureaucracies were alike, after all. In Moscow it would take forever. Operation KINGPIN had gone on forever, else it would have succeeded. Only the good luck of a low-level agent in the Southern United States had allowed them to warn Hanoi, and then almost too late—but now they had real forewarning.
Politics. You just couldn’t separate that from intelligence operations. Before, they’d all but accused him of delaying matters—he shouldn’t give them that excuse again. Even client states need to be treated as comrades. The General lifted his phone to make a luncheon date. He’d bring his contact over to the embassy, just to be sure that he had some decent food to eat.
29
Last Out
There was a vicarious exhilaration in watching them. The twenty-five Marines worked out, finishing with a single-file run that looped around the helicopters parked on the deck. Sailors looked on quietly. The word was out now. The sea sled had been seen by too many, and like professional intelligence officers, sailors at their mess tables assembled the few facts and garnished them with speculation. The Marines were going into the North. After what, nobody knew, but everyone wondered. Maybe to trash a missile site and bring back some important piece of hardware. Maybe to take down a bridge, but most likely the target was human. The Vietnamese party bosses, perhaps.
“Prisoners,” a bosun’s mate third-class said, finishing his hamburger, called a “slider” in the Navy. “It’s gotta be,” he added, motioning his head to the newly arrived medical corpsmen who ate at their own isolated table. “Six corpsmen, four doctors, awful lot of talent, guys. What d’ya suppose they’re here for?”
“Jesus,” another sailor observed, sipping at his milk. “You’re right, man.”
“Feather in our cap if it comes off,” noted another.
“Dirty weather tonight,” a quartermaster put in. “The fleet-weather chief was smiling about it—and I seen him puke his guts out last night. I guess he can’t handle anything smaller’n a carrier.” USS Ogden did have an odd ride, which resulted from her configuration, and running broadside to the gusting westerly winds had only worsened it. It was always entertaining to see a chief petty officer lose his lunch—dinner in this case—and a man was unlikely to be happy about weather conditions that made him ill. There had to be a reason for it. The conclusion was obvious, and the sort of thing to make a security officer despair.
“Jesus, I hope they make it.”
“Let’s get the flight deck fodded again,” the junior bosun suggested. Heads nodded at once. A work gang was quickly assembled. Within an hour there would be not so much as a matchstick on the black no-skid surface.
“Good bunch of kids, Captain,” Dutch Maxwell observed, watching the walkdown from the starboard wing of the bridge. Every so often a man would bend down and pick up something, a “foreign object” that might destroy an engine, a result called FOD, for “foreign-object damage.” Whatever might go wrong tonight, the men were promising with their actions, it wouldn’t be the fault of their ship.
“Lots of college kids,” Franks replied, proudly watching his men. “Sometimes I think the deck division’s as smart as my wardroom.” Which was an entirely forgivable hyperbole. He wanted to say something else, the same thing that everyone was thinking: What do you suppose the chances are? He didn’t voice the thought. It would be the worst kind of bad luck. Even thinking it loudly might harm the mission, but hard as he tried he couldn’t stop his mind from forming the words.
In their quarters, the Marines were assembled around a sand-table model of the objective. They’d already gone over the mission once and were doing so again. The process would be repeated once more before lunch, and many times after it, as a whole group and as individual teams. Each man could see everything with his eyes closed, thinking back to the training site at Quantico, reliving the live-fire exercises.
“Captain Albie, sir?” A yeoman came into the compartment. He handed over a clipboard. “Message from Mr. Snake.”
The Captain of Marines grinned. “Thanks, sailor. You read it?”
The yeoman actually blushed. “Beg pardon, sir. Yes, I did. Everything’s cool.” He hesitated for the moment before adding a dispatch of his own. “Sir, my department says good luck. Kick some ass, sir.”
“You know, skipper,” Sergeant Irvin said as the yeoman left the space, “I may never be able to punch out a swabbie again.”
Albie read the dispatch. “People, our friend is in place. He counts forty-four guards, four officers, one Russian. Normal duty routine, nothing unusual is happening there.” The young captain looked up. “That’s it, Marines. We’re going in tonight.”
One of the younger Marines reached in his pocket and pulled out a large rubber band. He broke it, marked two eyes on it with his pen, and dropped it atop what they now called Snake Hill. “That dude,” he said to his teammates, “is one cool motherfucker.”
“Y’all remember now,” Irvin warned loudly. “You fire-support guys remember, he’s gonna be pounding down that hill soon as we show up. It wouldn’t do to shoot his ass.”
“No prob’, Gunny,” the fire-team leader said.
“Marines, let’s get some chow. I want you people to rest up this afternoon. Eat your veggies. We want our eyes to work in the dark. Weapons stripped and cleaned for inspection at seventeen-hun‘rd,” Albie told them. “Y’all know what t
his is all about. Let’s stay real cool and we’ll get it done.” It was his time to meet again with the chopper crews for a final look at the insertion and extraction plans.
“Aye aye, sir,” Irvin said for the men.
“Hello, Robin.”
“Hi, Kolya,” Zacharias said weakly.
“I’m still working on better food.”
“Would be nice,” the American acknowledged.
“Try this.” Grishanov handed over some black bread his wife had sent him. The climate had already started to put mold on it, which Kolya had trimmed off with a knife. The American wolfed it down anyway. A sip from the Russian’s flask helped.
“I’ll turn you into a Russian,” the Soviet Air Force colonel said with an unguarded chuckle. “Vodka and good bread go together. I would like to show you my country.” Just to plant the seed of the idea, in a friendly way, as one man talks to another.
“I have a family, Kolya. God willing—”
“Yes, Robin, God willing.” Or North Vietnam willing, or the Soviet Union willing. Or someone. Somehow he’d save this man, and the others. So many were friends now. He knew so much about them, their marriages, good and bad, their children, their hopes and dreams. These Americans were so strange, so open. “Also, God willing, if the Chinese decide to bomb Moscow, I have a plan now to stop them.” He unfolded the map and set it on the floor. It was the result of all his talks with his American colleague, everything he had learned and analyzed formulated on a single sheet of paper. Grishanov was quite proud of it, not the least because it was the clear presentation of a highly sophisticated operational concept.
Zacharias ran his fingers over it, reading the notations in English, which looked incongruous on a map whose legend was in Cyrillic. He smiled his approval. A bright guy, Kolya, a good student in his way. The way he layered his assets, the way he had his aircraft patrolling back rather than forward. He understood defense in depth now. SAM traps at the ends of the most likely mountain passes, positioned for maximum surprise. Kolya was thinking like a bomber pilot now instead of a fighter jock. That was the first step in understanding how it was done. If every Russian PVO commander understood how to do this, then SAC would have one miserable time ...
Dear God.
Robin’s hands stopped moving.
This wasn’t about the ChiComs at all.
Zacharias looked up, and his face revealed his thought even before he found the strength to speak.
“How many Badgers do the Chinese have?”
“Now? Twenty-five. They are trying to build more.”
“You can expand on everything I’ve told you.”
“We’ll have to, as they build up their force, Robin. I’ve told you that,” Grishanov said quickly and quietly, but it was too late, he saw, at least in one respect.
“I’ve told you everything,” the American said, looking down at the map. Then his eyes closed and his shoulders shook. Grishanov embraced him to ease the pain he saw.
“Robin, you’ve told me how to protect the children of my country. I have not lied to you. My father did leave his university to fight the Germans. I did have to evacuate Moscow as a child. I did lose friends that winter in the snow—little boys and little girls, Robin, children who froze to death. It did happen. I did see it.”
“And I did betray my country,” Zacharias whispered. The realization had come with the speed and violence of a falling bomb. How could he have been so blind, so stupid? Robin leaned back, feeling a sudden pain in his chest, and in that moment he prayed it was a heart attack, for the first time in his life wishing for death. But it wasn’t. It was just a contraction of his stomach and the release of a large quantity of acid, just the perfect thing, really, to eat away at his stomach as his mind ate away the defenses of his soul. He’d broken faith with his country and his God. He was damned.
“My friend—”
“You used me!” Robin hissed, trying to pull away.
“Robin, you must listen to me.” Grishanov wouldn’t let go. “I love my country, Robin, as you love yours. I have sworn an oath to defend her. I have never lied to you about that, and now it is time for you to learn other things.” Robin had to understand. Kolya had to make it clear to Zacharias, as Robin had made so many things clear to Kolya.
“Like what?”
“Robin, you are a dead man. The Vietnamese have reported you dead to your country. You will never be allowed to return home. That is why you are not in the prison—Hoa Lo, the Hilton, your people call it, yes?” It seared Kolya’s soul when Robin looked at him, the accusation there was almost more than he could bear. When he spoke again, his voice was the one doing the pleading.
“What you are thinking is wrong. I have begged my superiors to let me save your life. I swear this on the lives of my children: I will not let you die. You cannot go back to America. I will make for you a new home. You will be able to fly again, Robin! You will have a new life. I can do no more than that. If I could restore you to your Ellen and your children, I would do it. I am not a monster, Robin, I am a man, like you. I have a country, like you. I have a family, like you. In the name of your God, man, put yourself in my place. What would you have done in my place? What would you feel in my place?” There was no reply beyond a sob of shame and despair.
“Would you have me let them torture you? I can do that. Six men in this camp have died, did you know that? Six men died before I came here. I put a stop to it! Only one has died since my arrival—only one, and I wept for him, Robin, did you know that! I would gladly kill Major Vinh, the little fascist. I have saved you! I’ve done everything in my power, and I have begged for more. I give you my own food, Robin, things that my Marina sends to me!”
“And I’ve told you how to kill American pilots—”
“Only if they attack my country can I hurt them. Only if they try to kill my people, Robin! Only then! Do you wish them to kill my family?”
“It’s not like that!”
“Yes, it is. Don’t you see? This is not a game, Robin. We are in the business of death, you and I, and to save lives one must also take them.”
Perhaps he’d see it in time, Grishanov hoped. He was a bright man, a rational man. Once he had time to examine the facts, he would see that life was better than death, and perhaps they could again be friends. For the moment, Kolya told himself, I have saved the man’s life. Even if the American curses me for that, he will have to breathe air to speak his curse. Colonel Grishanov would bear that burden with pride. He’d gotten his information and saved a life in the process, as was entirely proper for an air-defense pilot of PVO Strany who’d sworn his life’s real oath as a frightened and disoriented boy on his way from Moscow to Gorkiy.
The Russian came out of the prison block in time for dinner, Kelly saw. He had a notebook in his hands, doubtless full of the information he’d sweated out of the prisoners.
“We’re going to get your sorry red ass,” Kelly whispered to himself. “They’re gonna put three willie-petes through that window, pal, and cook you up for dinner—along with all your fucking notes. Yeah.”
He could feel it now. It was, again, the private pleasure of knowing what would be, the godlike satisfaction of seeing the future. He took a sip from his canteen. He couldn’t afford to dehydrate. Patience came hard now. Within his sight was a building with twenty lonely, frightened, and badly hurt Americans, and though he’d never met any of them, and though he only knew one by name, his was a worthy quest. For the rest, he tried to find the Latin from his high school: Morituri non cognant, perhaps. Those who are about to die—just don’t know. Which was just fine with Kelly.
“Homicide.”
“Hi, I’m trying to get Lieutenant Frank Allen.”
“You got him,” Allen replied. He’d been at his desk just five minutes this Monday morning. “Who’s this?”
“Sergeant Pete Meyer, Pittsburgh,” the voice replied. “Captain Dooley referred me to you, sir.”
“I haven’t talked to Mike in a while.
Is he still a Pirates fan?”
“Every night, Lieutenant. I try to catch some of the games myself.”
“You want a line on the Series, Sarge?” Allen asked with a grin. Cop fellowship.
“Bucs in five. Roberto’s real tough this year.” Clemente was having a career year.
“Oh, yeah? Well, so are Brooks and Frank.” The Robinsons weren’t doing so badly either. “What can I do for you?”
“Lieutenant, I have some information for you. Two homicides, both victims female, in their late teens, early twenties.”
“Back up, please.” Allen got a clean sheet of paper. “Who’s your source?”
“I can’t reveal that yet. It’s privileged. I’m working on changing that, but it might take a while. Can I go on?”
“Very well. Names of victims?”
“The recent one was named Pamela Madden—very recent, only a few weeks ago.”
Lieutenant Allen’s eyes went wide. “Jesus—the fountain murder. And the other one?”
“Her name was Helen, sometime last fall. Both murders were ugly, Lieutenant, torture and sexual abuse.”
Allen hunched forward with the phone very close to his ear. “You telling me you have a witness to both killings?”
“That is correct, sir, I believe we do. I got two likely perps for you, too. Two white males, one named Billy and the other named Rick. No descriptions, but I can work on that, too.”
“Okay, they’re not my cases. It’s being handled downtown—Lieutenant Ryan and Sergeant Douglas. I know both names—both victims, I mean. These are high-profile cases, Sarge. How solid is your information?”
“I believe it to be very solid. I have one possible indicator for you. Victim number two, Pamela Madden—her hair was brushed out after she was killed.”
In every major criminal case, several important pieces of evidence were always left out of press accounts in order to screen out the usual collection of nuts who called in to confess to something—anything that struck their twisted fancies. This thing with the hair was sufficiently protected that even Lieutenant Allen didn’t know about it.