by Eric Meyer
“How can I help you, Mr. Burns?”
He sighed, understanding that I wouldn’t discuss it with him. “Ok, it’s like this. Miles, my brother, he’s been captured. He was with Lieutenant Colonel Goldberg. They left Hue overland for Quang Tri to meet up with some of the ethnic tribes. They never reached Quang Tri and we had word yesterday evening that they were snatched by the Viet Cong. They’ve been taken to a small prison outside Hanoi, called Son Tay. Have you heard of it?”
I resisted the invitation to become embroiled. “That is most unfortunate. Are you planning a rescue mission?”
They looked at each other, Burns spoke first. “Diem’s government won’t agree to it, they’re worried about upsetting Hanoi. Diem is looking pretty shaky at the moment, he won’t do anything that may make things worse for him. So officially, the answer is no.”
I knew exactly where this was going, we all did in this room. I looked across at Paul and he gave a small shake of his head. We both knew it would be absurd to even consider going on a military mission behind enemy lines.
“Well if there’s anything we can do to help you, this side of the DMZ, of course, do let us know. North of the DMZ is of course a foreign country, that would be an invasion, as you are aware. Sorry, gentlemen, we cannot help you there.”
Robert Anderson stood up, his expression so woebegone and desperate that it was almost a caricature. Almost. “Hoffman, they’ll torture him, maybe kill him.”
I inclined my head, “That does occasionally happen, yes, this is a cruel war.”
“Cut the crap, Hoffman,” Burns snarled, revealing his true colours. “You know what we want, there’s no one else who can do it, even our black operations guys have to have some sort of official clearance and that isn’t going to happen, Diem has closed the door. You’ve carried out missions behind the lines before, certainly in Vietnam, although we don’t have the details. Probably in Russia, too.”
So they didn’t know about our assassination mission. At least that was something, they wouldn’t be asking us to go and shoot the enemy generals in their sleep.
“Gentlemen, all that was in the past, I was younger then.” I smiled and showed them my palms so that they could see how open I was being with them. “Now I have a business, this airline, as you call it, and a wife. It’s just not possible, sorry.”
“How much?” Burns asked abruptly.
“How much? There is no price because we will not be going,” I replied firmly.
My refusal only seemed to spur him on.
“I am authorised to offer you one hundred thousand dollars, cash, half in advance, half on completion of the mission.” He sat back, waiting for me to absorb the amount on offer.
“I’m sorry, but we cannot do it.”
“Two hundred thousand dollars, and your commercial permit will be guaranteed to be renewed for the next five years.”
“What the hell are you talking about, there’s never been a problem with our permit before,” Paul shouted.
Burns shrugged. So that was the way it would be, a large sum of money and our permits renewed, or the possibility of being grounded next year.
“A dirty trick, Mr. Burns,” I said coldly.
“Maybe, but we’re in a dirty situation. For Christ’s sake, this is my brother you’re talking about here, not some gook rickshaw driver,” Anderson said loudly. “Mr. Hoffman, I’m begging you, will you at least consider it?”
I looked at Schuster. “Paul?”
He nodded. “We’ll consider it, a serious look but no more, on condition that the threat of the permits being withdrawn is taken off of the table.”
A clever move, they had little choice if they were not to look like cheap, bullying blackmailers.
“Very well,” Burns said, “come over to MACV at 0900 hours tomorrow morning, we can go over the situation there with all of the intelligence reports. You’ll be meeting the commander, General Paul D. Harkins, so try not to keep him waiting.
“It would help if you would send us out some transport, our jeep was destroyed in a VC mortar attack, and we haven’t replaced it yet.”
It was all agreed, we’d be ready at 0830 and they would send transport to pick us up. We shook hands and they left.
“What do you think?” Paul asked anxiously. “It’s a lot of money, it could be a simple in and out operation.”
I laughed. “Paul Schuster, when have you ever know any military operation be either simple or in and out?”
He nodded and grinned. “You’re right, they never are. No, this is one to give a miss to.”
Helene came into the office, she’d walked out to the airfield when she heard us land. We embraced and kissed each other warmly.
“Darling, I was worried about you,” she said, “The weather reports said that there was a monsoon over Quang Tri province, I’m glad you weren’t caught up in it.”
“We were glad too,” I replied. Schuster kept a straight face.
“I’ve cooked up a late lunch, would you care for some, Paul?”
He agreed enthusiastically, he had a local Vietnamese girlfriend but she was more decorative, a typical Vietnamese pocket Venus in her Ao Dai, but she wasn’t the domestic type like Helene. We walked over to our bungalow, as we got nearer we could smell the cooking. She had the radio playing, a haunting song called ‘Stranger On The Shore’, by and Englishman, Acker Bilk. We washed and sat down to eat. I went to speak, but Helene stopped me.
“Listen to me, you two. I’m not a fool, what were those two CIA spies doing waiting for you at the hangar when you landed?”
We looked at each other. It was true that Helene had an intelligence gathering network that was sometimes the equal of the CIA.
“Just a job,” Paul replied, “they wanted us to fly up north and make a collection.”
“I see,” she said, looking thoughtful, “so the CIA trains its Harvard and Princeton summa cum laude graduates to be simple messenger boys, do they? Why couldn’t they just pick up the phone?”
I hadn’t got a fool for a partner, she was highly intelligent, a doctor and an accomplished woman. I guessed that she already knew exactly why they had come, so we told her everything, including the hairy takeoff from Lang Vei.
“You’re not going to accept, of course?” she said immediately.
“Well, it’s not as simple as that,” I replied hesitantly. “It’s not just the money, if they pull our commercial permit, we’re finished. We may as well pack up and leave.”
“At least you will be able to pack up and leave. If you’re dead or in a North Vietnamese prison, you won’t even have that option.”
It was a fair point. We argued backwards and forwards, but in the end there really was no way we could consider going, it was an operation best left to the military. We sat eating and drinking for the evening, it was one of those times when it was good to be alive. Vietnam could be a scented paradise, the sun shining and birds singing, when it wasn’t hell on earth. Finally Paul got up to say goodbye, he thanked Helene for dinner.
“You’re welcome, but remember, no missions to the North, do you understand?” she said severely.
He looked at me uncertainly, but I didn’t smile.
“No, my friend, she isn’t joking.”
When the car came to collect me in the morning, Helene came out and got in.
“What are you doing?” I said, aghast.
“Doing? I’m representing my interests as a part owner of the airline, darling. What else?”
I sighed and made room for her in the car. The driver, an elderly Vietnamese MACV employee, turned around and glanced at me and we both raised our eyebrows. Women!
The airfield was becoming busier with every week that passed. Our operation was conducted from what was little more than a field at the side, which kept us away from the hubbub of the stream of traffic that went in and out constantly. MACV had a satellite office situated in a building at the side of the airfield. We went through the door, Anderson and Burns were w
aiting for us, they raised their eyebrows at Helene but said nothing. We shook hands and went up the stairs and into a reception room outside the General’s office. We only waited for a few minutes, then a tough looking major came out and called us in. The General stood up to greet us, he shook hands with me, Helene and Paul and the major seated us in chairs set before the desk. Looking every inch the professional soldier, Harkins sat down behind his desk and waited for the two CIA men to begin.
He was fifty eight years old, a soldier who had made his name serving under General Patton in the Second World War when Adolf Hitler embarked on his final piece of idiocy, the Ardennes counteroffensive in the winter of 1944. As Patton’s operations officer, he earned the name Ramrod Harkins for his constant efforts to press forward. Harkins had repeatedly expressed optimism about the course of the war, although I wondered if his optimism has been dented by the poor performance of his forces at Ap Bac.
Milton Burns, the CIA man, started the ball rolling.
“I’ve spoken to Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Schuster, so far I haven’t managed to persuade them to give it a go, but I’m still hoping they may find it possible when they’ve seen the plan we’ve prepared.”
“And Mrs. Hoffman is here for what reason?” Harkins asked.
Before Burns could answer, Helene spoke up. “General, Mrs. Hoffman is here herself, you can ask me personally. And the answer would be that she is part owner of the airline so she has a say in the decision of whether to go or not.”
He smiled. “Very well, allow me to introduce Major Duane Brown.”
We nodded to the Major, who gave us a quick smile. “Major Brown is a man of, shall we say, exceptional talents, he has led several teams on search and destroy missions against the Viet Cong.”
“Does he have experience of North Vietnam?” I asked him.
“No, not as such, but we’re confident he can do the job.”
I wasn’t. The culture, customs and everything about North Vietnam was totally different from that in the South. But it was their business, not mine.
“The plan is to fly his men into the North, his team will parachute into Son Tay and break the prisoners out, then lead them back to safety. Right, let’s have a look at the maps.”
We spent some time going over the maps and charts of the area, intelligence estimates, reports, even some aerial photographs that the General told us were taken by a U2 overflight. We winced as he said it, almost three years ago the Soviets had shot down a U2 spy plane with an S-75 missile, it was piloted by Francis Gary Powers who was still serving a ten year sentence in Russia for espionage.
Russia, of course, was the country that was supplying Hanoi with most of their arms and equipment. I hoped for the U2 pilot’s sake that they hadn’t yet supplied Ho Chi Minh with the S-75.
The photographs were remarkably clear, they showed a village and a larger structure at one side which they said was a factory that had been converted into a prison. It was about twelve miles outside Hanoi. After surveying all of the maps, looking at the photographs and reading the reports, we sat back down to discuss it.
“Mr. Hoffman, what do you think, you’ve fought in that area, can it be done?”
“General, what you are proposing is to send a small team into the heart of Ho Chi Minh’s territory, take on the guards of this prison and release the prisoners, who may be injured or wounded, then get them back hundreds of miles through enemy territory. The chances of success are very slim. If you fly them out, you’ll be up against North Vietnamese MIG 17s and their air defence system, which has become quite sophisticated. It is definitely not worth the risk, unless one of these Americans had knowledge of your complete order of battle and the Commander in Chief’s strategy for the next several years, which I assume is not the case.”
There was a silence in the room. The General, the Major and the two CIA men looked embarrassed, and it suddenly stuck me in a blinding flash of comprehension. The extraordinary sum of money on offer to get them back, the threats, the personal interest of the MACV commander. Bringing them back was not a priority.
“It’s not a rescue mission, is it, General? It’s an assassination.”
Helene went white. “Oh, dear God, like the Giap mission.”
They all looked at her. “What was that,” Burns said, “About Giap?”
“Something we heard, that’s all, about a French plan to kill the commander of the Viet Minh during the French war,” I said quickly.
“Oh, right, did it come to anything?”
“No,” Helene, Paul and I replied in chorus.
“How would you know?” Burns asked suspiciously.
We would know because we were there, fighting through a hostile, inhospitable country on a virtual suicide mission. But it was a forgotten part of our past, sealed by order of the French government and mutual agreement.
“There was something about it in the local paper,” I replied lamely.
Burns nodded and lost interest so I tackled the General further. “So what exactly do these two men know? Am I to understand that you sent them into hostile territory with detailed knowledge of your military planning? That’s why you’re talking about coming out overland, you don’t intend that they’ll be with you, you’re planning to silence them.”
Harkins looked angry. “What knowledge they have is not your concern, Mr. Hoffman, but we consider it vital to our interests that they not be forced to tell the communists what they know.”
He put emphasis on the Mr., underscoring my civilian status. “Neither did we send them into hostile territory, they were operating inside the Republic of South Vietnam.”
I couldn’t help laughing out loud. “You may not consider it hostile territory, General, but I can assure you that the communists do.”
The office went silent, we were at an impasse. Major Brown made an attempt at a resolution. “Look, arguing won’t make a dime’s worth of difference. I propose we make a deal with Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Schuster.”
We looked at him. “Go on, Major,” Harkins said suspiciously.
“It’s just this, they both have considerable experience of operating in the North. If they will agree to act as mission consultants, we’ll offer them a reasonable payment for their services and no threats on their licenses. We’ll get one of the company aircraft to take us, I’m sorry, Burns,” he said, nodding to the CIA man, “that’s the way it will have to be.”
He looked hard at Burns as he mentioned the licenses and using the CIA’s own aircraft, Burns glared back at him.
Harkins nodded. “That’s sounds reasonable, Major. Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Schuster, what do you say?”
Paul nodded to me in the affirmative. “On one condition, that this mission is a rescue, and not an assassination, we’ll have no part of that.”
“Of course, we can agree to that. There never was a plan to assassinate anyone, so that’s no problem,” the General said. He had the grace to avoid my eyes as he said it. He rounded on Burns, who was trying to speak.
“Mr. Burns, just get me an aircraft, I don’t care how you do it, clear?”
The man nodded resignedly.
“In that case we’re agreed,” I said, “we’ll give you all the help you need.”
We spent the rest of the morning going over their plans. Schuster and I checked and rechecked maps and reports and passed on our knowledge of the area around Hanoi, constantly reminding them that it was ten years out of date. The General had sandwiches and coffee brought in for lunch and we kept on working into the late afternoon. By six we still hadn’t finished and they took us back to our hangar.
The following morning we were booked on a routine flight to Hue, taking regular supplies for a French exploration company. We agreed to meet the day after, which would be the final day before the actual mission began. Time wasn’t on their side, if the communists found out about the information that their two American captives held, the mission would be over and with it a large part of American strategy for the foreseeable future in Sou
th East Asia.
Schuster and I took the C-47 to Hue in the morning. It was a milk run, as the RAF used to call their missions during the Second World War. We flew up, unloaded and started the flight back without any problems from the communist insurgency. On the way back the starboard turbocharger started malfunctioning again, we decided that we would have to import a spare from the US, expensive but the only way we would keep the aircraft flying. The radio crackled, it was Johann.
“Johann,” I greeted him cheerily, “you’re just the man I need, we’re still having supercharger problems, we’re going to need to source one in the U.S. if there’s no other way.”
There was silence. He came back after almost a minute. “Jurgen, we’ve got a problem. There’s been another mortar attack at Tan Son Nhat.”
“Damn, any damage to our hangar or aircraft?”
“It’s not that, one of the shells missed the airfield completely, Jurgen. It hit your bungalow.”
Helene! I couldn’t ask the question, I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach, I felt dizzy, everything started to go black. Schuster understood immediately and took over.
“How is she, Johann, is she alive?”
“Yes, she’s alive,” he said hastily, “but she’s badly wounded. A U.S. officer, a Major Brown, found out and pulled some strings, he had her taken to Saigon Station Hospital on Tran Hung Dao Street, it’s a naval hospital that serves the whole of MACV.”
I cut in. “Johann, how is she, what are they doing to her?”
“She’s not good, Jurgen. She took a splinter to her abdomen that went right through and is resting against some major organs, I’m not entirely certain what they are, sorry.”
“Look, tell me the truth, is she expected to live?”
He was silent for a full half a minute, it seemed like an hour. When he spoke again, his voice was stretched and broken as if he had been weeping. “It’s touch and go. We don’t know, but a priest has given her the last rites.”
I reeled and clutched at a metal stanchion for support. Once again I felt the blackness coming over me. Paul looked over. “Are you ok, Jurgen?” I nodded, took a deep breath to control myself and spoke into the microphone. “Thank you Johann, we’ll be back as soon as possible. Would you have a taxi standing by in an hour?”