by Tom Wilson
At first Nguyen Wu almost panicked; then he calmed himself and lied and told the Russian that the demand did not come from him, but from his aunt.
Dimetriev changed his tone. He hedged that Madame Li Binh should speak for herself, since it was such a sensitive and unorthodox request.
Wu sensed the change in the Russian and resumed his confidence. He said she had relayed the request from Paris, and that the entire matter must be held in the utmost confidence. After a short argument the chief of Russian advisors agreed to take action.
When Nguyen Wu rose to go, he looked at the Russian colonel evenly and told him, "This conversation did not occur."
Dimetriev looked away, muttering in Russian. Nguyen Wu translated. The Russian wished by all that was decent that it had not.
As Colonel Nguyen Wu was driven across the central and northern quartiers of Hanoi, back toward the two large buildings housing the Vietnamese People's Army headquarters, he felt increasingly pleased with himself.
The plan would work. The death of Quon's only son would surely distract him from a minor problem such as control of the two radars.
1445 Local—Air Battalion Briefing Room, Phuc Yen People's Army Air Force Base
Kapitan Aleksandr Viktor Ivanovic
Most officers of the Soviet Air Force went through thirty years of faithful service and were never faced with a choice between duty to the party and preservation of personal honor. Aleks Ivanovic, a capable fighter pilot sworn to remain a "brave and diligent warrior in support of the constitution and Soviet law," was not so lucky. On Saturday afternoon he came nose to nose with the ugliest face of political reality and was never again the same.
Ivanovic was completing his briefing to the Vietnamese pilots. Subject: Positioning for attack upon a force of aircraft. He'd finished with the "use of clouds for cover" and was about to review the afternoon's lessons when a clerk slipped into the room.
He was passed a note telling him to proceed immediately to Hanoi, that a driver from the Soviet embassy was waiting in front.
Two hours earlier, during a break, the ranking pilot advisor assigned to the Phuc Yen air regiment had come by to ask Aleks about the new batch of Vietnamese leytenants, fresh from flight training in Russia. Since the same mayor had also signed the note, Aleks assumed the invitation was related to that conversation.
The driver was a junior enlisted man, a Lithuanian with only a single gold stripe adorning his blue shoulder boards. He was young, with fuzz on his chin and a few wayward hairs on his upper lip showing he was trying to grow a mustache. He was rather dull and kept his conversation to a minimum, answering Aleks's questions only after prodding. A harbinger of trouble when they arrived in Hanoi? Aleks could think of nothing he'd done to warrant disciplinary action. He liked his vodka and the company of females, and he occasionally sang a bit loudly at parties, but those were expected of an interceptor pilot of the Soviet Air Force. Reassignment to another unit? He did not like that idea, for he was only now, after six weeks, feeling at ease with the pilots of the air battalion to which he'd been assigned.
The twenty-kilometer drive between Phuc Yen and Hanoi went very slowly due to the teeming road-repair gangs. Main highways were damaged more by heavy usage than by bomb craters. Traffic moved in great surges at night and during bad weather, creating oversized ruts and great potholes in road surfaces. During the daytime the traffic was light, but that time was reserved for the road-repair gangs, hordes of old people, women, and children driven by bullies wearing militia uniforms. The occasional vehicle, such as the one occupied by Aleks, was stopped again and again. If you wanted to get somewhere quickly, you obtained proper authority and waited for darkness.
By the time they'd crossed the small bridge over the Canales des Rapides into the Gia Lam area, he'd learned only that the driver had been born and reared in a farm town in northeastern Lithuania, that he disliked the fact that the windows of his vehicles had to remain open due to the terrible heat, and that the dust that billowed inside was dirtier than that found in Lithuania. When Aleks asked how he liked Hanoi and his assignment, the driver clenched his jaw and did not answer. Aleks thought that odd. Most Lithuanians enjoyed complaining about anything at all.
They passed Gia Lam, Hanoi's busy municipal airport, and approached the Long Bien bridge, which spanned the wide river the Vietnamese called the Hong Song. On a concrete pillar at the northern end of the bridge he read the French words "Riviere Rouge . . . un homme grand . . . Governeur Paul. . . ." His French was spotty, but he finally interpreted that this bridge crossed the Red River and had been erected in honor of a governor named Paul something. The rest of the name had been obliterated, so he assumed it was not a popular one.
He shifted his attention back, again asked, and was again told that the young driver had no idea why he'd come for Aleks. This time he grumbled, more like a true Lithuanian, that he'd been told to wait for Aleks and take him back to Phuc Yen when his business was done. Two trips instead of one, he complained.
Aleks felt better. If he was being called in to be disciplined, it was nothing serious or he wouldn't be returning so quickly. He still wondered what it was about, but with less foreboding. He looked out at the scenery with more interest.
Aleks Ivanovic was a happy man, not only contented but excited about his lot. And why shouldn't he be? He was young, in superb health, was a better than adequate jet interceptor pilot who loved his job, and was sufficiently appealing to females that his sexual appetites seldom went unfulfilled for long.
The wide river they were crossing was the color of old rust on a sheet of iron. His attention was drawn to construction along the riverbank. Rough shanties lining the sides of the shore, both up- and downriver, were being cleared from the area within a kilometer of the bridge. Strange, he thought, as he watched the beehive of activity at locations throughout the cleared area. He searched with inquisitive eyes until he realized they were preparing hundreds of gun positions. Artillery pieces were already installed in some, and more were being drawn into place by a motley collection of vehicles, water buffalo, and swarms of humans.
An American air attack was obviously expected upon the bridge. Then he remembered similar activity around the bridge over the Canales des Rapides, so he supposed they expected an attack there too.
Intelligence obtained by the North Vietnamese was uncannily accurate. In the South they usually knew when and where the American soldiers were about to attack. Here in the North, they often knew bombing targets even before the American pilots were briefed.
The driver left the big bridge and drove into the city, then abruptly slowed to a crawl behind an endless convoy of heavily laden, Chinese-manufactured six-by-six vehicles and trailer trucks, all belching black smoke and moving sluggishly through the central quartier. Each night hundreds of them were loaded at the railroad sidings at Yen Vien and Gia Lam to move almost endlessly through the city, protected from bombing attacks by the sworn word of the American President himself. They would gather and wait in the southern suburbs. Then, during darkness or bad weather, they would move southward in a great, relentless tide.
Aleks was amazed by the spectacle of the vast lines of supplies rumbling through Hanoi, but the Lithuanian driver only smoldered with anger at the slow convoys and was not at all impressed. When they finally turned off the main artery onto a cross street, he released a loud curse and mighty sigh that he was rid of the traffic.
At the tall green-painted gate to the Soviet embassy, a guard peered and nodded in recognition at the driver, then glanced at Aleks's identification and waved them through. They drove around the tree-lined perimeter road to a large building, where the driver stopped near the double-doored entrance.
"Where do I go?" asked Aleks.
The driver shrugged. He'd delivered him.
Aleks opened his door and got out, looking about warily and wondering whether he should go inside. A meticulous and stiff serzhant, three gold stripes on blue shoulder boards and wearing a rope of
braid, came out of the door and looked about.
Two officers passed, resplendent in crisp green uniforms and wearing the black shoulder boards, collar tabs, and hatbands of missiles-and-artillery men. Another passed, wearing the red of combined arms, and two more the light blue of aviation. You could tell the headquarters men from the advisors, Aleks decided, because of the advisors' hungry look and the important expressions of the staff officers.
The meticulous serzhant, definitely a headquarters type, allowed his eyes to settle upon Aleks. He likely had fifteen years' service, but Aleks would bet he'd never served in the field. Too soft and too neat.
Aleks felt uneasy. He'd worn his flying suit, and now it was rumpled and sweat soaked from the drive. He ran his hand through his hair, then placed his service cap atop his head to hide as much of it as possible.
Eight weeks earlier they'd cut his hair stubble-short in preparation for the Asian tour, telling him it would help him cope with the infestations of lice he'd find in the tropics. When he'd arrived at Phuc Yen, the Russian advisors already there had joked about his hair. The only great infestations of lice they knew of came from the crotch of a Vietnamese girl working in the laundry who'd tumble in the mounds of dirty bedding for a couple of cigarettes. A short haircut might protect you from her lice, one wag had said, if you used your tongue on her, and he'd extended and quivered his tongue suggestively. Another said if he did that, he'd better check his mustache and nose hairs for the little beasts.
Since experience was measured in degrees of baldness, the advisors allowed their hair to grow too long. Aleks's hair looked strange, still too short on top, but much too long at the sides, and he was ashamed he'd come to the Russian embassy compound looking like this.
"Kapitan Ivanovic?" the immaculate serzhant asked.
"Yes."
"This way, please." He led the way inside, then down a wide hall with a high-gloss floor. The serzhant's shoes ticked as he walked. He's had metal inserts added to the soles, Aleks noted. How strange headquarters people were. More clerk than warrior, yet they wore the gaudiest uniforms of all.
POL. FEODOR DIMETRIEV, the sign in the hall announced. They turned into the open doorway, passed through one room into another, and finally into a large office.
Aleks glanced back to see the serzhant slip out and close the door behind himself. The full colonel sat quietly, reading from notes and ignoring Aleks, who stood awkwardly.
He'd recognized the name, and he now recognized the man he'd met at the embassy reception shortly after arriving in North Vietnam. Polkovnik Feodor Dimetriev was in charge of the 300-man Soviet advisory contingent. He coordinated all surface, naval, and aviation matters with their Vietnamese hosts and passed on requests for support from Moscow. An influential man. Not a pilot, but an administrative officer wearing the red tabs of combined arms, he'd made it obvious that he believed that Aleks and the other fighter pilots were rather mindless. In an endless introductory speech he'd told Aleks's group to do their duty for the motherland by helping this brave Republic, a new anchor of socialism in Asia. Aleks and the other pilots had waited until Dimetriev had left before laughing at his theatrics.
Dimetriev looked up from his desk and almost stared at him. Not quite, for his eyes did not meet Aleks's.
Aleks waited for another long moment, then barked out his name, "Kamerade Kapitan Aleksandr Viktor Ivanovic. Sir!"
Dimetriev lifted his hand and dropped it, as if to say he already knew that. "Do you know a pilot named Thanh?" he asked quietly.
Aleks replied that he knew Thanh, a leytenant second grade who'd recently returned from Russia, where he'd been trained to fly the MiG-21 interceptor. He started to add that the leytenant's father was their air regiment commandant, but Dimetriev cut him off.
"It is reported that you know him well," Dimetriev said, frowning and staring as he spoke, still looking not at Aleks's face but just above it.
Aleks paused to think of an appropriate response. It was not exactly correct that he knew the young leytenant well, although he spent a great deal of time with him.
Upon his return from pilot training in Russia, the leytenant had dramatically broadcast that he was forsaking his formal name as his father had done years before and was dedicating his own life to vengeance. He'd first taken his father's name of Quon, then had changed it to Thanh, which was Ho Chi Minh's family name. He'd confided to Aleks that although as far as he knew, the Enlightened One's family had never suffered at the hands of any oppressor, his father had suggested the idea. That made the idea a sound one. The propaganda writers who swarmed to Phuc Yen loved Thanh just as they did his father, but seemed not to notice that the son was not at all sure of himself, or that he eagerly listened to advice from just about anyone.
Young Thanh needed people and their inputs. Guidance from Aleks about flying skills, from his commander regarding his duties, from his father about the directions of his life. Aleks felt that good interceptor pilots required few reassurances, for they knew they were good. The only people they needed were adversaries, so they could prove it. Thanh's dream was to make his father proud of him. But Thanh was a poor pilot, and left to his own devices, he would fail them both.
Aleks started at the beginning. "The leytenant was checked out in big-tail PF-model MiG-21's, and has had certain problems getting accustomed to the small-tails here," he told Dimetriev. "He has not . . ."
Dimetriev interrupted. "But do you know the leytenant well?"
"He asks many questions and trusts my advice. Nothing more."
Feodor Dimetriev continued to refuse to meet his eyes as he considered the answer. Aleks became increasingly disconcerted. Was he looking at his hair?
Then, as if he'd made a momentous decision, Dimetriev warily dropped his voice. "Very important people among our hosts," he said, "wish for the leytenant to become a Hero of the Republic. You"—he still avoided Aleks's eyes—"have been selected to help with the task."
"They want him protected?" Aleks asked. Photographers from the government news agency and reporters from Nham Dan, the party newspaper, lurked about Phuc Yen and made a great fuss about Thanh. It wasn't so surprising the party wanted him protected. He started thinking of ways he might shield the leytenant from danger.
But Polkovnik Dimetriev was frowning with some emotion Aleks could not define. "You must learn to listen, Kapitan Ivanovic," he hissed. "They mean they want a Hero of the Republic. I would guess that if he was to become a hero, it would require more than hiding from danger. I might think it would require a degree of boldness."
His sarcasm stung Aleks, who hesitated for only a moment before impudently retorting, "And if the leytenant does not wish to be bold, or to become a hero?"
"Then you must help to make him bold," Dimetriev said in a louder, almost angry voice. He was testy.
Dimetriev brandished a French cigarette, readily available in Hanoi and fast becoming a favorite of the Russians stationed there. He carefully lit it, sucking avidly on the thing. Smoke trickled from his nostrils as he spoke. "The matter is of importance to their party, but it is just as important to maintain secrecy. His father, his fellow officers . . . no one . . . must know what you are doing."
Aleks was bewildered about just what it was that Dimetriev was ordering him to do. "Do they wish for me to help him destroy an enemy aircraft?"
"That might be acceptable . . . if he was seen to actually destroy an American aircraft. But of course, that would lead to the requirement to shoot down another and then yet another, and you cannot do it all for him, can you?"
"Perhaps I could help him shoot down one airplane," mused Aleks. "Two would be ambitious."
"Then find another way," Dimetriev snapped.
Aleks was staring, wondering just what it was that the ground-loving, sister-fucking polkovnik in the too-neat uniform had called him in for. Why wasn't he coming out with it? And what was there about it all that kept the man from looking him in the eyes?
"He is not a good pilot," Aleks
confided. "It may be difficult to get him to do anything requiring skill."
"It was pointed out to me," said Dimetriev in his lowest and least audible tone, "that many glories may be accorded to a dead man."
Aleks stared.
"I believe you understand me now, Kapitan." Then, just as suddenly, still unable to look him in the eye, Dimetriev curtly dismissed him from his office with a flick of his wrist and a shower of French tobacco sparks. He cursed as he picked a glowing coal from his shirt front. "You'll know when you have your chance," he said in the low voice as Aleks prepared to leave.
Aleks would not forget the shower of sparks and the shaking hand as Dimetriev plucked the ember from his shirt. He finally understood what it was that Dimetriev wanted.
He had just been told to kill the leytenant in such circumstance that Thanh would appear to have died heroically.
"The chance may come very shortly," said the chief advisor.
Damn the sister-fucking . . ."I cannot do this thing, kamerade Polkovnik," he spouted, not caring that his voice was shaking and his tone disrespectful.
"It must be done, Kapitan," said Dimetriev, ignoring his words. "Tomorrow you and the leytenant will deploy to Kep. Perhaps you will find your chance there."
"I am not on the list to go to Kep."
"The list has been changed. Wherever the leytenant goes, you shall follow until your task is done."
"I cannot do what you ask," Aleks repeated, drawing himself up to his tallest, numbed with outrage.
Dimetriev sighed.
"I must confer with the mayor at Phuc Yen about this request, kamerade Polkovnik Dimetriev."
"You shall speak to no one about it. That is an order."
Aleks's anger seethed and his voice trembled. "I must return to my unit, kamerade."
"Salute me first, Kapitan," Dimetriev said, his voice low, as if searching for something familiar and honorable in the situation.
Aleks saluted crisply, unable to keep repugnance from his expression, then turned and strode, head high, from the office.