Edge of War - [Red Dragon Rising 02]

by Larry Bond

  The CIA director turned a notebook computer around and showed him a map of northern Vietnam, trying to pin down where exactly the massacre had taken place. Josh located the camp where they had been when the Chinese first attacked, but the map showed the stream where he had been chased on the wrong side—or at least what he thought was the wrong side.

  “Should be up here,” he said. And as he pointed, he sneezed, barely covering his nose and mouth with his forearm.

  “God bless,” said the president. “Peter, I think you can work on the exact location and narrow it down later. In fact—”

  The president paused, a thought forming in his mind. Josh and the others looked at him expectantly. Then Josh sneezed again.

  “Hope that’s not catching,” said the president. He smiled at Josh, letting him know it was a joke.

  Or at least Josh thought it was.

  “I, uh—no. Allergies,” said Josh, sneezing again. “Excuse me, sir.” He got up and moved toward the door, trying to discreetly blow his nose.

  “It may be more useful to us to be vague,” said the president. “For now. To make it seem as if we don’t know exactly where it is.”

  Frost and the president began discussing the political implications. Josh, though consumed by his sudden sneezing fit, was shocked, not only that they were planning how best to use the information, but that they would consider holding back some of it. Facts were facts—data points, whether convenient or not, had to be shared and dealt with. That was the only way one reached truth.

  Scientific truth, at least.

  The president turned to him abruptly. “Josh, here’s what I’d like you to do. I’m going to address a special session of the United Nations on Friday.” Greene pushed off from the desk and walked past Josh toward a large globe that stood near the fireplace. He put his hand on it, moving it gently, gazing at it distractedly. “I’d like you to be my guest. And to repeat what you’ve told me.”

  “Everything?” said Josh.

  “Well, shorten it a hit,” said the president.

  “The interesting parts,” said Frost drily. “And we can do without the sneezing.”

  The president laughed. So did Frost, after a moment.

  “It’s all right, Josh. The director has a very droll sense of humor.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you, little girl”—Greene leaned toward Mạ; his voice was soft and gentle—”would you tell your story to the world?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” blurted Josh.

  Everyone looked at him.

  “Why not?” asked Frost.

  “Because—she’s just... a little kid.”

  “Well, I agree with you there, Josh.” The president straightened. “But—well, let’s take the matter under advisement.” He turned to Cole. “The psychologist will be here in the morning?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’ll get his input.”

  “Hers.”

  “Hers.”

  Greene frowned. Josh could tell he didn’t like being corrected.

  “But, Josh, you’ll definitely be there, yes?” said Greene enthusiastically.

  “Well, yes, sir.”

  “Ms. Duncan, I’d like you there as well,” said the president. “The media will be interested in your impressions. And how you got our friend out.”

  “The SEALs played a part,” said Mara. “Two of them died.”

  Greene looked at Frost. “The Chinese killed them, right?”

  “That’s what we believe.”

  “Then there’s not a problem with that,” the president told Frost.

  “I don’t want to be giving away craft,” said Frost. “I think we should just produce Josh and leave it at that.”

  “She adds authenticity,” said Greene. He looked over at her. “And she’s an attractive young woman. Ms. Duncan, hope you don’t mind my compliment. I’m afraid that’s how things are with the media. People will look at your pretty face and focus on that rather than your intelligence and resourcefulness, which I’m sure were the real reasons for your success.”

  Mara had flushed. “Thank you, Mr. President.”

  “Not at all. You’re the one who deserves thanks. And you, too, Mr. Lucas. I know you and your staff have been working hard on this.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Get someone from my staff to help Josh whittle down his speech,” Greene told Cole. “One of the political boys. Billy would be best. Jablonski. You know what? I’ll call him myself.”

  The president walked to his desk, picked up the phone, and told the White House operator to get him William Jablonski.

  Josh glanced at his watch. It was nearly 1 a.m. Was Jablonski still in his office?

  “You’ll like Billy,” said Greene, looking over at them from the phone as he waited for the call to go through. “He’s a bit of a pill, but he knows his stuff. He got me through New York. And that took some doing. Don’t offer to buy him lunch though.”

  “Josh,” said Mạ, tugging on him.

  Josh turned to her. “What’s up, honey?”

  “Josh,” said Mạ.

  Mara leaned over to her and whispered something in her ear. They exchanged a few words in Vietnamese.

  “She’s tired,” said Mara. “She should get some sleep.”

  “We have a nurse who can take her,” said Cole. “There’s a bed all ready for her.”

  “In a hotel?” asked Josh.

  “My house.” Cole beamed. “My wife and I have two kids, eight and five. She’ll fit right in.”

  “She only speaks Vietnamese,” said Josh.

  “I have a translator coming,” said Frost.

  Meanwhile, the president’s line connected.

  “Billy,” said the president, his voice rising several decibels. “Listen, I have an incredibly important assignment for you. . . . The hell with that. I’ll square that for you. . . . No, that’s crap. . . . Listen, I have a real hero here—a pair of heroes. Josh MacArthur and Mara Duncan. Josh witnessed the Chinese massacre of a village in Vietnam. Ms. Duncan rescued him from behind the lines.”

  “There were SEALs involved, Mr. President,” said Lucas.

  “SEALs, too,” said the president. “It sounds like a movie plot, but it’s real. I want Josh to talk with me Friday in New York. He needs a little polish. Not too much—it shouldn’t be Hollywood. Find him some clothes, too. Get Sara on it. . . . Well, whoever you think can do a decent job. He should look like a scientist, though, not some wiseass rap star. . . . You won’t have to do anything with her.”

  The president gave Mara a wink, then told Jablonski that he would be hearing from Josh and Mara later in the day.

  “No, you know what? Get up to New York. You can meet with them there,” the president told Jablonski. “And, Billy, this is quiet until the session. No advance notice, you understand. That columnist at the Times you have in your pocket—if he finds out about this before I step to the podium, you are going to be flailed and I’ll be using your skin as a bear rug at Camp David. Capisce?”

  ~ * ~

  Mara watched the president, considering how to explain tactfully that she didn’t want to go public, since doing so would effectively end her career in operations.

  It bothered her that neither Frost nor Lucas had pointed this out. Lucas especially.

  The risk wasn’t just to her. Anyone who had dealt with her would presumably be in danger: guilty by association. She hadn’t been a spy recruiter, but a good portion of her work in South Asia had called for the use of aliases and other covers, and there would be a decent trail of potential exposures.

  So why the hell hadn’t Lucas pointed this out? Frost, maybe— maybe—wasn’t completely aware of her resume, but Peter Lucas certainly was.

  The president hung up the phone. Before Mara could say anything, there was a loud knock on the door. Turner Cole, the aide who had taken them there, stepped into the office and told the president that the NSC adviser and staff, along w
ith the secretaries of state and defense, were waiting in the Cabinet Room.

  “Good, very good.” Greene practically sprang from his seat. “I think we’re going to keep you two under wraps,” he said, pointing to Mara and Josh. “I just need the director and Mr. Lucas. Get up to New York, both of you.”

  “Mr. President,” said Mara. “Sir—”

  “Mr. President, Mạ is very tired,” said Josh quickly.

  “Mạ? Oh, right—well, of course. It’s past her bedtime,” said Greene. “Turner—are all the arrangements made?”

  “Yes, sir. We just—we were getting a translator.”

  “Well, where is she?” said Greene. He got up and started walking toward the door. “Come on now. I want this girl taken care of. Marty!”

  The president disappeared through the door, calling for one of his aides. Cole and Frost followed him.

  “Peter, I have to stay covert,” Mara said to Lucas as he got up. “If I go public, my career is over.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” said Lucas. “Don’t worry.”

  ~ * ~

  Josh stood, waiting with Mạ for the president to return. She pushed against his side, sucking her thumb, her eyes narrow slits.

  “She’s got to get some sleep,” he told Mara.

  “Mr. Cole is going to take care of her.”

  “You think that’s okay?”

  “Well—what else do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. She can—she could stay with us.”

  “Us?”

  “Me.”

  “You ever take care of kids?”

  The answer of course was no. And Josh couldn’t speak Vietnamese. Still, he didn’t want to leave her.

  “Look who I found,” said Turner Cole, returning to the Oval Office. A young Vietnamese-American, his eyes drooping, and a woman with a small backpack followed. The translator and nurse, Tommy Lam and Georgette Splain, respectively.

  The translator dropped to the floor, legs curled, and began talking to Mạ. She looked at him for a few moments, not saying anything. Then suddenly she started talking, words racing from her mouth.

  “She wants more ice cream,” explained Mara. “Mr. Lam says he knows where they can get some.”

  “All night Friendly’s,” said Lam, beaming. You’d never know he had a sweet tooth to look at him; he couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds.

  “Mạ really should be getting to bed,” said the nurse.

  Josh felt pangs of jealousy as the translator, the nurse, and Cole talked with Mạ. It was silly. He couldn’t take care of her.

  Actually, he had taken care of her. In the jungle. But here there were professionals and people with kids. He wasn’t exactly Mạ’s dad.

  Mạ looked up at Josh as Lam explained that she was going to go with them to Mr. Cole’s. He would stay the night on a couch to help translate.

  “I’m—I—I’m going to stay in a hotel, Mạ,” said Josh. “All right?”

  Mara bent down and started talking to Mạ in Vietnamese. When she was done, Mạ turned to Josh and hugged him. He reached down and grabbed her.

  Tears welled in his eyes.

  “I’ll see you soon,” he said.

  He looked away as she left.

  “I told her that we’ll see her,” said Mara. “And that there are other kids.”

  Josh nodded.

  ~ * ~

  “We want to find the site, but keep it quiet,” Greene whispered to Frost as they walked toward the Cabinet Room. “Put it under surveillance. When word leaks out, dollars to doughnuts the Chinese will try and dig up the bodies. We’ll have it on video.”

  “Dollars to doughnuts?” said Frost.

  “That’s my stomach talking.” Greene laughed. “Let’s get Josh and Mara up to New York, get them ready for Friday. Have them leave tonight.”

  “What about the girl?”

  “She can come up with me.”

  “You think she should testify?”

  “Of course. Why not?”

  “We have to vet her first.”

  “What do you mean vet? The scientist found her in the jungle, right?”

  “We have to hear what her story is. We just heard what Mara said.”

  “That’s good enough for me.”

  “George . . .”

  “Have your man Lambert talk to her and hear her story. He has until Friday.”

  “You really think it’s a good idea? We have the scientist.”

  “Christ, Peter. All these years and you still don’t know crap about what sells in the media, do you?”

  ~ * ~

  8

  Hanoi

  As a military strategist, Major Win Christian was plodding and predictable, exactly the sort of opponent Zeus would love to meet on the battlefield. In fact, the only time Zeus ran into trouble when facing him in the Red Dragon war games was when he failed to account properly for Christian’s stupidity. Faced with what looked like an idiotic development, Zeus had trouble believing his opponent wasn’t setting him up for some brilliantly clever and devious counterplay. But that was never the case.

  As an engineer, however, Christian had real talent. Charged with helping the Vietnamese navy and air force—such as they were—come up with fake submarines and aircraft, he was creative and efficient. His hastily arranged collections of sheet metal, wood, and bamboo at Hai Phong not only gave Vietnam a dozen submarines overnight, but showed stockpiles of what looked like long-range torpedoes, along with the external modifications that allowed the weapons to be strapped to launchers on the hull. He also added the capacity to carry an unspecified but suitably nasty-looking antiship missile to a pair of otherwise inoperable Hormone helicopters.

  “I call it the Zeus Murphy weapon,” said Christian proudly. “A lethal dose of bullshit in every breath.”

  “Har-har,” said Zeus, stooping over the coffee table in General Perry’s hotel suite to examine the photo.

  The weapon and the subs looked so real that even trained satellite analysts couldn’t tell that they were fake—as the intelligence alert posted by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office an hour earlier attested.

  “Vietnam Moving Antiship Weapons onto Helicopters” was the title of the brief but credulous report.

  “I wonder if the CIA would be able to leak this intelligence to the Chinese,” said General Perry.

  “The Chinese are already seeing this on their satellites,” said Christian. “There’s no need to leak it.”

  “If they think that we think this is happening, it adds more credibility,” Perry added.

  “I may be able to try something,” said Zeus. He remembered that Mara had warned him not to deal with the CIA station at the embassy; while she hadn’t been explicit, it was obvious from her hints that there was some sort of mole there, working for either the Chinese or the Vietnamese. In any event, it would be an easy matter to leave this for them in hopes of its getting back to Beijing.

  “Do you have time?” asked Perry.

  “I don’t leave for a couple of hours,” said Zeus. “Now that I know where Hai Phong is, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  The driver assigned to him earlier in the day had gotten lost. Vietnam was a small country, but it turned out that many of its residents, even soldiers, had never visited anywhere very far from the place they had grown up.

  Perry turned to Christian. “Major, would you excuse us for a moment?”

  Christian nodded.

  “Drink?” Perry asked, going to the credenza at the side of the suite room.

  “Sure.” Zeus jumped to his feet.

  Perry was short and very thin; Zeus guessed he was no taller than five six, and if he weighed 130 it was only with his winter uniform on. But Perry had two Silver Stars and three Bronze Stars with the V device—-V as in Valor, an award given only if its recipient had been under fire. He’d more than proven his mettle.

  Until this assignment, Zeus had had only brief contacts with the general during war ga
mes, and thought he was very standoffish and cold. His opinion had changed considerably in the past few days, however; the general had proven not only warmer, but much more clever and unorthodox than Zeus had suspected.

  “I would offer you your choice,” said Perry, picking up a bottle, “but it will all come down to the same thing—Johnnie Walker Black Label, or Johnnie Walker Black Label?”