The Point Team

by J. B. Hadley

  Eric could see that this man by himself could plant more rice seedlings per hour than all twelve of them put together, so he shut up.

  The old man continued, “You know, people weren’t always so bad here in Vietnam as they are now. Today they have seen so many terrible things, they have become hardened. Before the Second World War, I remember, it was the French who were our masters, then the Japanese, back came the French again, then the Diem family in Saigon, and when they were gone Marshal Ky, the Viet Cong, and the Americans. Now it is the communists. We country people do not care who is in power if only they would leave us alone. But they never do. The worst of all are the communists. I am a wise old man. I do not shout my opinions for all to hear. I smile and say, yes, comrade. Until they moved me from my ancestral land. That I will not take …” He suddenly straightened up from his work, and his eyes blazed in his wrinkled face. “No. They cannot do that to me. When I leave this place, I will go back there again, even though they have forbidden it.”

  “Is that why you are here in this camp?” Eric asked.

  “Yes. For being on my own land. Next time, they will have to spill my blood on the soil where my ancestors are buried before they can move me.”

  He stooped again at his work, and Eric worked alongside him, aware that his movements were slow and clumsy in comparison to the old man’s. After a while, the old man showed him a certain way to hold the shoot and move his hands which involved less effort on his part. The man watched Eric for a while as he got the hang of it.

  “That’s good,” the old man said, and looked about at the efforts of the other eleven boys. He smiled. “You must teach them what I have shown you.”

  “I will,” Eric promised.

  “I am sixty-eight,” the man said. “I’ve had my life, and I am ready now to accept death. I’ve seen a lot of things—amazingly good and very evil. I don’t think I want to stay around here much longer. It’s you young people I feel sorry for.”

  “Don’t,” Eric told him. “We won’t be staying here much longer, either.”

  The old man gave him a penetrating look and then returned to planting rice shoots in the mud beneath the water.

  Chapter 12

  LARRY Richards was thin, small, fast. His hair lay short and lifeless on his small head, and his face had a sort of yearning look that women much larger than him found irresistible. Men were more apt to notice the weasel expression in his face. Larry had been called a little rat more than once. He didn’t mind.

  Hannigan’s Bar was across the street. Larry Richards sat behind the wheel of his car and waited patiently. This place was a gold mine for Provos. As soon as the Paddies came to this side of the pond, they lost all caution. As well they might, Richards thought to himself. Most Americans, even when they abhorred the violence, were on the side of the glorious rebels. British intelligence, on friendly territory with Washington when dealing with most other issues, was only now for the first time getting back against the IRA gunrunners and fund-raisers. However, problems still persisted on the individual level. FBI agents with Irish names—and also many without—could not be trusted to make a reasonable effort or even to cooperate as fully as they might on something else. The city police in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago were worse.

  Richards, a Londoner, was a freelance agent. He went where pay was highest. Theoretically. Because in real life you worked for one power center, and if you stepped out of line, they fucked you good and proper. All of which brought Peregrine Addendale to his mind. Addendale, the one at the British consulate who dealt with Richards, was something out of a John LeCarré novel. He was elegant, understated, Stonyhurst and Oxford. Richards’ background was the drab northern London suburb of Finsbury Park and the fairly new Sussex University.

  Peregrine Addendale had style. He had insisted that Larry do this job with the gun issued to him, an Enfield revolver No. 2 Mk 1. This was a variation of the gun issued to the British army in 1932! Larry supposed he was fortunate Addendale hadn’t insisted he drive a vintage car. And he was to leave the gun on the scene … This old British Empire revolver was to be a signature to tell the Provos they were not safe on this side of the Atlantic, either. As far as Larry was concerned, this was Oxford amateur theatricals.

  The Provisional IRA did not use Hannigan’s Bar as a meeting place, as far as Larry Richards could tell. The neighborhood bar in Woodside, Queens, was just a casual waterhole for any of the lads who happened to be in this New York City borough. The subway here was elevated on steel girders, and trains clattered almost directly above where his car was parked. It was less than half an hour’s run into Manhattan.

  Richards once again riffled through the wad of photos, front and side shots of hard-faced men and a few women. He stopped when he came to Don Morgan’s mug shot and stared with hatred at the calm visage which looked out at him from the photo. Morgan had been sentenced in absentia to fifty-five years in jail in a Belfast court for the killing of one British parachute regiment soldier and the wounding of three others. Morgan had placed a radio-controlled bomb at the side of a narrow country road and detonated it from his hiding place as the patrol of four soldiers passed the bomb in their Land Rover. From what Richards had heard, two of the three soldiers who survived were so mutilated it would have been a greater mercy had they been killed outright. Morgan had been arrested and confessed to the crime under interrogation. While on his way to a court hearing, his prison wagon was struck by a heavy truck and Morgan was rescued at gunpoint.

  Morgan had dropped out of sight for more than two years when Larry Richards saw him one afternoon leaving a bar on Third Avenue and traced him to an address in Kearney, New Jersey. At first Peregrine Addendale, then new at his job, had refused to believe Morgan had reappeared on this side of the Atlantic and further insisted that everything had to be done in a lawful manner to apprehend him. Richards placed Morgan in the Jersey location and asked Addendale to call in the Feds. As Addendale somewhat shamefacedly put it later, the FBI, the Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms all turned down his request because the British had never listed Morgan in their computers. After four hours on the stakeout with no action, Richards phoned Addendale to ask what was happening. They agreed to call the New Jersey State Police or Kearney police only as a last resort, and, on Richards’ suggestion, Addendale tried Immigration first. Two inspectors came and left empty-handed. Morgan himself left the place ten minutes after they had gone. Addendale started to learn at that point he was no longer in Buckinghamshire. That had been five months ago.

  Now Richards had Morgan spotted again. He came several mornings a week to Hannigan’s and spent an hour or so there. Richards decided not to risk following him, since his informant had said this could easily spook Morgan. Addendale hadn’t held back this time. It had been a straightforward “Get rid of Morgan.” Then he was handed an antique weapon! Actually, there was nothing wrong with the Enfield revolver. It had been standard British army issue throughout the Second World War and continued in service till replaced by the Browning HP35. In spite of its being a bit cumbersome in comparison to modern weapons, it was reliable because its double action was built to stand up to the wear and tear of military use.

  Morgan came out of the bar with two other men. Larry Richards recognized one of them. He flipped through the photos rapidly—he knew the position of the photo vaguely—and checked out the mug shots of a fair-haired man. Willie Stevens. Murder. Possession of high explosives and firearms. No information as to why he was on the loose. Peregrine Addendale had probably never heard of him and would expect Richards to capture him with a butterfly net. Fuck that. If Morgan walked down the street with Stevens, Richards would call it a day. Come back some other time. He wasn’t going to take those two on—and he had no idea who the third man was—with a fucking King George VI all’s-well-with-the-world Enfield revolver. After all, Larry Richards said aloud, he was not down from Oxford.

  Morgan stood for a while talking with t
he two men, then shook hands with each and headed off down the sidewalk by himself. He turned into a street of residential homes and disappeared from Richards’ view. Larry Richards started the car’s engine, slipped it into gear and drove across the intersection and into the street. He saw Morgan five hundred yards farther along, drove past him and pulled into a space at a fire hydrant. He pulled on a pair of leather gloves, took out the .38 Enfield, twirled the chambers and replaced it in his side pocket.

  He knew Morgan would register his presence in the parked car. A man on the run notices details in a way that would be paranoia in someone not being hunted. Richards wanted Morgan to be aware of him—he wanted to see a flicker of fear in the man’s face, wanted to see him run for his life and then recognize it was too late, that retribution had overtaken him, that death was here. Such a ceremony was far more satisfying than simply creeping up behind someone and shooting him in the back. The end result was the same in both cases, but the first method was that of a craftsman who enjoyed his skills.

  The Provisional IRA man strolled by the car with only the most casual of glances inside. Richards was not fooled. If he had made a move, Morgan would have thrown himself out of the line of fire in a split second. Richards climbed out of the car and closed the door quietly behind him, and the sinister click of the lock being pressed shut rather than the door being thoughtlessly slammed caused a perceptible stiffening of Morgan’s body, but he did not turn around. Richards walked on the sidewalk after him, and for a moment the sound of their footsteps, slightly out of sync, was all that could be heard on the quiet street.

  Richards held the .38 beneath his coat. Morgan’s hands swung beside him as he walked. If he reached for a weapon, Richards would blast him to kingdom come before he could free it. He did not want to move too far from his car, hired as always under a false name, but he wanted to see some reaction from his victim before he wasted him.

  A car came down the street from behind Richards. Morgan quickly turned and began to cross in front of it. The driver had to brake to a stop to avoid him. But Morgan wasn’t looking at the car, he was looking straight at Richards, and his eyes dropped to where Richards was holding the revolver beneath his coat. Morgan knew.

  “What the hell’s with you, fella?” the driver of the car shouted to Morgan. “Get the fuck outa my way.”

  “Shut up, you thick-headed fool,” the Provo responded in a sharp, almost Scottish accent.

  The driver jumped out of the car. He had the build of a football player and was in his early twenties. He walked up to Morgan, still standing in front of the car. Morgan swung out in a sudden uppercut and decked the driver across the hood of his car. Car doors opened, and two other big bruisers leaped out to join the fray.

  Richards smiled and decided that the Provo was unarmed. Well, this was not going to get him out of the trap. As Morgan faced off against the two, holding up his fists and moving on his feet like a trained boxer, Richards raised the Enfield, sighted quickly down the barrel and squeezed the trigger.

  Morgan was knocked off his feet by the impact of the bullet, and the two men about to fight him looked down in puzzlement at his body on the road. They were standing next to the running engine and didn’t hear the shot or see Richards walk away back up the street to his car.

  Bob Murphy had called him the previous night and said he wanted him to meet two men, an American and a Frenchman, with a proposition that might interest him. Richards would drop off the hired car at La Guardia Airport, hopefully vanishing without a trace there if someone saw the car, then catch a taxi from there to Republic Airport in Farmingdale and fly his Cherokee Six 300 up to Bennington, Vermont.

  He got in the car, made a U-turn and tossed the Enfield revolver out the window as he sped away.

  Campbell, Verdoux and Murphy spent the morning skeet shooting on Murphy’s private range. The Australian outshot the others easily, so the close competition was between Campbell and Verdoux. When Andre beat Mike narrowly, it was silently recorded by Verdoux as another factor that qualified him for the mission—something that showed he still had a good eye and reflexes, something to demonstrate he was not yet over the hill. Mike pretended not to be aware of this.

  Mike knew that Andre was up to something. He had driven into Bennington first thing that morning. Mike suspected he had gone to make calls on a public phone, and when he took off alone again after lunch, he was sure of it.

  “Larry Richards will be in sometime during the after noon,” Bob Murphy told them. “He had an appointment he couldn’t break this morning, so why not let’s all relax until we get his call from the airport. I guarantee he’ll fit your team, Mike, and be raring to go.”

  “You seem pretty sure of him, Bob,” Campbell commented noncommittally.

  “I served with him in Malaysia,” Bob said. “When you chase commies in the jungle with someone, you know real soon whether you can depend on him as a partner or not.”

  “I know what you mean,” Mike agreed.

  “After that, Larry was with the SAS in Ulster for a couple of years. I would think whatever he mightn’t have learned in Malaysia, he picked up on there. A bit of postgraduate study, you might say.”

  “Larry Richards was never in Vietnam,” Mike said, “and I hadn’t intended taking anyone along who hadn’t already been there.”

  “That’s for you to decide,” Bob conceded, “but I’ve seen combat in both places—Vietnam and Malaysia—and it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference in which one you happen to be if you’re lugging a thirty-five-pound backpack and your equipment and you’re knee-deep in swamp water crawling with snakes, with mosquitoes big as hummingbirds—’’

  “All right, all right,” Mike laughed, “I’ll keep an open mind.”

  When the call came from the local airport, Bob left to pick up Larry Richards. Andre Verdoux had said nothing much for a while. Mike guessed he did not approve of Bob Murphy, but was saying nothing because opposition from him now might endanger his own place on the team.

  Mike teased him. “If you don’t think much of this Aussie, wait until you see the other two I’ve recruited. This is going to be a real rat pack, Andre.”

  The Frenchman gruntled moodily.

  When Bob Murphy brought the Englishman, Mike took the newcomer to one side without delay. What he did not need were contributions from Andre and Bob, negative or positive.

  “Well, you seem like you’ve seen a bit of action,” Mike started in a friendly tone.

  He told him very little about the mission, that it would be worth a hundred thousand dollars to him, and that it would be a very high-risk operation.

  “Why do you want to go?”

  “For the hell of it,” Larry answered.

  “Not the money?”

  Richards shook his head. “I’d make that much money in a day flying in coke from the Caribbean. No, I want to do some soldiering again. And if that’s the way I meet my Maker, so be it.”

  “Where do you go from Bennington?”

  “I live in Rome, New York, not far from Utica. Less than an hour from here by air.”

  “You got a wife and kids?”

  “Back in England somewhere,” Larry said. “I’m forty-two and I got a girl friend less than half my age. So I’ll be no irreplaceable loss to anyone except myself.”

  “Looks like you’re on the team, then.”

  They shook hands and rejoined the others.

  After a quick look at Campbell, Verdoux took up the offensive. “Lawrence Richards is a familiar name in some circles. I don’t suppose you’d be the same one who works for Canadian intelligence in surveillance of French-speaking Quebecois on this side of the border?”

  Richards smiled nonchalantly. “All you Frenchies imagine the Anglo-Saxons are out to get you.”

  “I hear our host”—Verdoux gestured to the Australian—“was along on some of your assignments.”

  Bob remained silent.

  “It seems also”—Verdoux was enjoying himself—�
��that you haven’t completely severed ties with your mother country, Mr. Richards, in spite of becoming an American citizen. I hear that you provided protection of some sort during Her Majesty’s recent visit to California, that you have been involved in funneling arms to Belize via the Bahamas, that you once were involved with Libyan transactions but they no longer deal with you, that the Provisional Irish Republican Army has a price of ten thousand dollars on your head … I’m sure there are other things I’ve forgotten to mention. Bob Murphy doesn’t seem to be involved in anything but spying on the French Canadians.” Andre paused for effect. “I got all this today with two telephone calls. Imagine what I could come up with if I had time.”

  Mike Campbell swiveled his eyes around to Larry Richards. “Any reason I should trust you to come on this mission?”

  Richards dismissed Verdoux with a contemptuous wave. “Certainly Frenchie here is right. I’m a field operative, and since I’m a successful one I happen to be well-known. Only those who never achieve their objectives manage to stay undercover. But, Mike—you wonder, am I a security risk to you? According to Frenchie here, the Canadian and British governments trust me to do work for them—I’m not acknowledging that I do. If they can trust me, why can’t you? The Canadians and British have nothing to gain from me selling them information about you, and you yourself, Mike, say that Washington is on to you, which is why you’re recruiting in the lonely hearts columns or whatever. I bet that’s where you found Frenchie.”

  Verdoux exchanged an amused look with Campbell and said nothing.

  Richards went on, “Take you, for example, Mike. Mad Mike Campbell. How many phone calls do I have to make to give you a lurid bio? None at all. You’re the last person on earth, Mad Mike, to query me on my résumé.”

  “I said you were on the team, Larry. Now shut up.”

  Richards clammed up. He and Verdoux exchanged malevolent glances.