Dr. Fwang-tse was there for several hours. He was a trained physicist of some ingenuity, but the transcription was slow because there were many words on the photographed material that were unfamiliar to him, so that they had had to bring in a South Vietnamese student, just returned from M.I.T., to help.
It was almost eight o’clock at night before Colonel Yen was told that Dr. Fwang-tse was ready with his report.
“What you have here,” said Dr. Fwang-tse, lowering the intensity of the light he had trained on the photographs, “is a complicated but comprehensive plan based on something the Americans are calling a ‘Spikebuoy,’ defined as an ‘Unattended Ground Sensor.’ It is, in simple terms, a noise detector. It is designed to pick up any noise, no matter how faint; to transmit that sound, through its own frequency, to a recorder, probably airborne, which in turn feeds it into a computer which in turn records and analyzes what was heard. Its purpose, I would guess, is very clear: to use on the Trail in order to detect enemy transit.”
That was enough—all that Colonel Yen needed.
But he was a cautious man and he decided, after consulting with his two most trusted aides, to spend the evening considering alternatives, of which there were several.
He called the U.S. embassy.
The ambassador was at dinner. Should he be interrupted?
Colonel Yen was relieved that he had not needed to speak directly to General Taylor. “No. But be good enough to pass along this message to him, that Colonel Yen Chi will need to see him most urgently at ten A.M. I shall be at his office.”
“Should I write down your telephone, Colonel?”
“The ambassador will not be able to reach me. But you can confirm the authenticity of this call by telephoning ARVN Headquarters. Ask for Intelligence. My office will know about the ten o’clock meeting.”
“Very well, Colonel.”
And now … Should he report immediately to General Khanh? After all, however shaky his hold on the government, he was still the actual head of the Republic of South Vietnam.
No. He would wait. He could always say he had spent the time reconfirming the contents of the photographic material.
The time had come, he told his aides, to visit the prisoner.
Major Tucker Montana, the handcuffs back on, his beard a day old, was brought into the meeting room.
Colonel Yen gave orders to the guards. They removed the shackles and receded to the corners of the room. Colonel Yen now spoke in English.
“You may sit down.”
Tucker did so.
“Why did you give secrets to the enemy?”
“What secrets?”
Colonel Yen got up from behind the desk and, the photographs in hand, walked around and thrust them under Tucker’s chin.
Tucker Montana was visibly amazed.
“Where did you get these?”
“From the briefcase of a gentleman with whom you spent almost three days, who a few minutes later departed, with two companions, on a chartered plane to Hanoi.”
Tucker’s mind was racing. How had Bui Tin got hold of the photographs of the Spikebuoy development? He had not traveled with the portfolio from which these photographs had obviously been taken. And then … then he remembered clearly that when he had first mentioned the word “Spikebuoy,” Bui Tin had said he knew nothing about a Spikebuoy. Yet in his briefcase all along, Tucker now knew, was a duplicate of his own top-secret Spikebuoy folder. Granted, there were copies of that folder floating about, but every one of them was numbered, and except for copies used every day at Nakhon Phanom and at Aberdeen, there was only his one set, locked in the big vault at the Caravelle.
He said wearily, “I can tell you one thing, Colonel Yen. I did not give those photographs to—to the man you took them from.”
Colonel Yen sighed. “Ah then, so you are going to be one of those.”
“One of those what?”
“One of those who proclaim their innocence, even when there is overwhelming evidence of guilt.”
“I’m just telling you: I did not give those photographs to the North Vietnamese.”
“Ah then. You knew he was a North Vietnamese?”
Tucker said nothing.
“What were you talking to the Vietnamese about, him and his two friends, including the Russian, for two days and two nights?”
“About how to end the war.” Why not be truthful? he thought. When possible.
Colonel Yen yearned to submit his prisoner to physical pressure. The two guards had been especially selected: they were well trained in the arts of persuasion. He thought about it.
No. He had better not mangle the prisoner before his meeting with the ambassador the next morning. And with General Khanh. He drew slowly on his cigarette. Then said sharply, “We will continue this tomorrow.” He spoke to the guards in Vietnamese.
Tucker said, “Colonel, would you pay a fellow officer the respect of putting a reading light in my cell? And could I see a newspaper? And maybe you have a book or two in English here?”
Colonel Yen lifted the telephone and spoke to the chief warder. Tucker didn’t understand it all, but got a few words. “No lights for prisoner.”
He looked up at Colonel Yen and spat on the floor.
38
November 8, 1964
Saigon, South Vietnam
At 2:30 the next afternoon Blackford, somber, intent, was on the lead patrol boat in the Gulf, on the final test run with the metal scanner. To be tested was a second South Vietnamese patrol boat in which the U.S. technician had carefully stored, in shipboard compartments variously shielded with silver oxide paper, wet blankets, and other materials designed to deflect inquisitive beams on the prowl for metals, several kinds of weapons. The question was: Might the North Vietnamese, once they became aware of the Tracer, easily package their contraband in such a way as to escape detection at sea? The American technician was most anxious to be done with this, the concluding test, and to get back to Washington with his notebooks. When the mate called Blackford to the radio, he waited impatiently by the screen of his device. To the technician’s surprise, the Mai Tai suddenly turned, not toward the patrol boat its mission was to scan, but back toward Danang. At full speed.
He rushed up to the noisy cockpit. “What goes on?” he asked Blackford.
“I’ve been called back. Emergency.”
“But—but we could have done our test in just over an hour!”
“You can go back and make the test.”
“That will take us another two hours round trip!”
“So, Lieutenant, what do you want me to do? Radio back to cancel the emergency?”
Rufus’s voice was tense. Could Blackford make the four o’clock scheduled flight to Saigon? If not, Rufus would arrange for an Air America transport.
“No, I can make it. If I miss, I’ll call from the airport and tell you. Do I need to bring anything special with me?”
Rufus paused. “Bring your gear.”
Blackford supposed he was being sent to America. Perhaps with Tucker? If so, would Tucker wear handcuffs? If only he knew exactly what Tucker had done, closeted at that inn with the North Vietnamese.
He called Juilland. “Alphonse. Meet me with the car at BOQ. You’ll be running me to the airport.”
He emptied the contents of his chest of drawers into a large bag and, into another, his reading and writing materials. In less than fifteen minutes he was in the car, in less than two hours at Rufus’s safe house.
The door latch responded instantly to his knock. He left his baggage on the landing and rushed upstairs. Flinging open the door, he collapsed, sweating, in the armchair. “What’s up, Rufus?”
Rufus told him about Tucker.
And Blackford told Rufus about Tucker. When he was through he said simply, “Since you already knew about Lao Dai, it was easy for me to promise not to tell you about her until he made his plans. You should know, Rufus, that my plan was to pick him up at the airport and get him the hell back to Wash
ington. I don’t know what he did at that inn with the gooks.”
Rufus made no comment. He told of the events of that morning.
It had been one hell of a meeting, Rufus said, using an expletive he used perhaps once a year, and never during Lent. “General Khanh, Colonel Yen, Maxwell Taylor, and me. General Khanh is being his most obnoxious self. His slippery hold on the government has prompted him to exhibitions of great assertiveness. He is taking the position that what happens to Tucker is the business of the government of South Vietnam, that the government of South Vietnam, ‘please remember, Mr. Ambassador,’ is an independent state. That the government of South Vietnam is of course very grateful for the critically important aid being given by the United States, but is also aware that the United States is giving this aid to the government of South Vietnam to further United States interests, and United States interests are currently being served primarily by the sacrifice of South Vietnamese lives because the government of the United States, while acknowledging theoretical responsibility for guarding its allies against aggression, is not willing to do what the government of South Vietnam has been urging it to do, what the government of South Vietnam itself wishes to do, namely to declare war against the aggressor and carry the war to the aggressor’s hearth. Et cetera, et cetera.”
“I get the picture, Rufus. So what does Khanh want to do with Tucker?”
“What he wants to do is to torture him for information on exactly what went on in Savannakhet. That is what he truly wants to do, to say nothing of Colonel Yen.”
“How’d you handle that?”
“I didn’t. But Max Taylor did. Pretty impressively. He said, ‘General, the answer is: One, no. You may not manhandle an American official here on military duty. And my second comment is, two, are you aware that you would be attempting to get information from an American who has won the Congressional Medal of Honor for conspicuous bravery?’”
“Did it work?”
“I’m not absolutely sure, to tell you the truth. Because General Khanh went back to a point which is not altogether frivolous. Namely that Tucker has committed treason against the government of South Vietnam. And that it is exclusively the right of the government of South Vietnam to decide how to handle traitors no matter what their nationality.”
“I hate to say it, but legally I think he’s right, isn’t he?”
“Yes. He is right. We will need to lean on the dependence of the South Vietnamese government on the United States. The argument went on more than two hours.”
“What was General Taylor pressing for?”
“He wants Tucker taken by the South Vietnamese to the airfield—in shackles; Max Taylor said that would be all right—and placed in one of our military planes, which will take him to Hawaii, and from then on he’s our problem.”
“Reaction?”
“Out of the question, et cetera, et cetera. And then heavy emphasis on their right to be briefed about the probable military damage done by acquainting the enemy with the secrets of Igloo White.
“They reached a point where there simply wasn’t anything to be said that hadn’t already been said, so they agreed to meet again tonight at ten P.M. But—but, we got one small concession from them. You will be permitted to talk to him. I told the general, and Colonel Yen, that you were an important influence on him, that you might get from him cooperation of the kind he isn’t willing to give us … the whole line. They have nothing to lose by giving this one indication that they are being reasonable. So—you are to be at the Kham Chi Hoa prison at exactly nine P.M.”
“I know what I have to do before then.” Blackford looked at his watch. “Rufus, I’ve got to find Lao Dai but I don’t have her address. Your people have been tailing her—”
“Blackford. She has left the city. While waiting for you I went myself to her apartment. She was not there. I went to her school. She hadn’t shown up this morning. Back to the apartment, and dug up a neighbor who said she had left in an automobile with three bags at eleven this morning. She’s flown.”
“Goddamn.” He thought for a moment. “But Tucker has no reason to know anything on this score, does he? He doesn’t even know that you spotted her as a spy before he did. He doesn’t know that you’ve been onto her for a week.”
“I’ve thought about it. I don’t know whether Colonel Yen threw Lao Dai at him. We don’t even know how the North Vietnamese agent who met with Tucker at Savannakhet got those photographs. Tucker told Colonel Yen he didn’t give away the photographs, that he didn’t even have his Igloo folder with him. He may have been lying, but we opened up the hotel safe and got out Tucker’s briefcase, broke into it, and his folder is sitting there. Of course, he could have photographed the folder and taken the photographs with him and simply lied to us. I just don’t think so.”
“You think—?”
“I think probably Lao Dai photographed them at some moment of opportunity. Of which,” Rufus looked down, his lips in that fatalistic configuration Blackford knew well, “I am sure she had many.”
Blackford did not eat dinner. Instead he walked toward the prison, a half hour away. He arrived early, at 8:30, and entered a Vietnamese restaurant on the corner of the street opposite. He then ordered a bowl of rice and soup. He fiddled with it. His mind was reeling, and he knew that he must do his best to be persuasive. To persuade Tucker. He feared for his arsenal of arguments.
At 8:55 he was at the gate. He had carefully straightened his tie. He was wearing a light gabardine suit. He must be the essence of formality with the prison officials.
Inside, he was beckoned into a private room, and there rubbed down so thoroughly he wondered for a moment whether they would next demand a strip search.
He had six cigars in a pouch. “Why so many?” the captain asked.
“I work best when I am smoking. And as Colonel Yen no doubt has told you, I am here to do very important work on his behalf and on behalf of General Khanh.” The captain gave him back his matches.
He was taken to the meeting room and told to sit down. Instead, Blackford turned and walked back toward the corridor.
“What is the matter?” the captain asked, clearly alarmed.
“I have been authorized to talk privately with Major Montana. I am a representative of the government of the United States, and I decline to carry out my instructions in a room”—he pointed to the meeting room, traversing his finger from one end of it to another—“that is obviously wired for sound. I shall return to my quarters and wait until I hear again from Colonel Yen.”
There was a hurried consultation between the captain and an adjutant who had said nothing during the proceedings. They spoke hastily in Vietnamese. The captain turned to Blackford: “Where would you consent to meet with the prisoner?”
“In your office,” Blackford said.
There was a pause. “Very well. Follow me.”
It was a pleasant, workmanlike office, with a large desk, a small conference table, and two armchairs. The captain walked over to his desk, picked up a few loose papers, tinkered with the telephone, and went out. Blackford was left alone. He looked at his watch. It was 9:15. In five minutes the door opened. Tucker came in. He was shackled, but the guards shut the door behind him, and they were alone.
The two men stared at each other. Tucker breathed heavily, but said nothing. Blackford’s voice was hoarse when he said, motioning to an armchair, “We may as well sit down.”
Tucker did so.
“I did manage to get you this.” He drew out the packet of cigars.
Tucker’s face softened. He cleared his throat. “Don’t mind if I do. You didn’t bring an electric razor, I suppose? Funny, all the fieldwork I’ve done, I still don’t like to go without shaving.” He leaned over to draw in the flame Blackford held out. It was awkward, having to lift both hands to hold his cigar to his lips. Finally he had it lit.
“No. Sorry, no razor. Maybe next time. I wasn’t sure I could get away with the cigars.”
“They’ve f
ed me. But goddamn, Black, there’s almost no daylight in that cell. And none at night. Not one fucking watt of light. You know something, remember I told you I was on the Enola Gay on the Hiroshima run, my job to keep my eyes on the bomb’s metabolism? I had to lie down a total of five and a half hours each way, half of it with the bomb as my bedmate, half the time by myself, on the return leg, in the dark, except for those little red lights for reading the gauges. That was the only other time I was where I couldn’t read a book, unless you count some of those foxholes in Korea.”
He smiled as he drew on his cigar, and without hesitating went on, “I know why you’re here, Black. I mean, I knew you’d come and visit me just to be a nice guy, but you’re obviously here ’cause you were sent here, and that would be to find out what I was doing with the North Vietnamese guys, and you know something, Black, pal, you’re not going to find out. Because nobody’s going to find out. What I did would be undone if anybody found out. So that’s it, and I hope we can talk about other things. Because … otherwise, there’s nothing to talk about.”
Blackford knew that was it. He said nothing.
And then, exhaling evenly, Tucker said, “What time is it exactly. Black? They took away my watch.”
“It’s twenty to ten.”
“The warder tipped me off an hour ago. You see, he’s a Catholic, and saw the bio on me they must have got from the embassy, shows I went to a Catholic school as a boy. What he told me, in case I wanted to say some prayers before then, was: They’re going to shoot me at ten P.M.”
Blackford shot up. His eyes narrowed. He turned and lunged for the telephone on the captain’s desk.
The dial had been padlocked.
He went across the room to the door. It would not open. He banged on it. There was no answer. He was white with rage. In desperation he turned to Tucker.
“It’s a scare tactic! Hell, at ten they’re meeting, the big cheeses. General Khanh, Colonel Yen, Maxwell Taylor, Rufus—to talk about you! We’re trying to get you on a transport to Hawaii!”
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