Conspiracy db-6 Page 7

  Small laptop-like computers sat on the table, permanently connected to each other and the Deep Black computer system via a thick, shielded cable. The room was soundproof and, like the entire level, incapable of being bugged.

  Or as Rubens would put it, not yet capable of being bugged.

  No security system was impenetrable; defeating it was simply a question of devoting resources, creativity, and time.

  “Your cover will be as a salesman for agricultural machines. An agricultural exposition is being held in Ho Chi Minh City and we’ve arranged for credentials for you.

  There’ll be a packet of background and technical material in your briefcase. Tommy Karr will meet you in Tokyo,” continued Telach. “From there we’ve arranged for you to fly to Thailand, and then take another plane to Ho Chi Minh City.

  A driver will meet you at the airport.”

  “You mean Saigon, right?” said Dean.

  Marie smiled. Dean didn’t know how old she was, but he guessed she was too young to have experienced Vietnam firsthand. It was just history to her, or worse, legend.

  And to him? Only a dim memory. Something that had happened to someone else, to a young Marine not even old enough to drink. In fact, he’d lied about his real age to get into the Corps.

  Not the last lie he’d ever told, but the last one he felt reasonably good about.

  “The driver will be a local, someone businessmen use,” said Telach. “He’ll speak at least some English, but of course we’ll be able to help you with our own translator here. Please leave your communications systems on so we can do that. The CIA will vet the driver, but obviously he won’t be working for us. Be careful what you say.”

  Dean nodded.

  “Kelly Tang is the CIA officer assigned to help you. She’s covered as a Commerce employee, and she’ll be at the expo.

  She’ll be arranging different receptions and maybe a lunch-eon where you may be able to meet one if not more of the contacts. That’s still a little loose.” A picture of a woman in her early twenties appeared on the screen.

  “This is Tang. Look for her at the reception the first night.

  The CIA is trying to dig up some information on Infinite Burn as well,” added Telach, referring to the Vietnamese assassination program. “We’re all sharing information. So far, they don’t have anything. And for the most part, they’re skeptical.”

  “So am I,” said Dean.

  “Good.” Telach continued, detailing how the CIA and local embassy people could be contacted. Tang would make available local agents — foreigners who worked for the CIA — if Dean needed help.

  “There are three people you’ll have to contact. We don’t have an enormous amount of information on most of them, so you’ll have to gather some of it on the run. We do have some recent photos for two of them, and an old war time shot of the third. They were all connected with the war, but whether that’s significant or not we don’t know.” A Vietnamese man a little older than Dean appeared on the computer panel.

  “This is Cam Tre Luc. He’s a mid-level official with the interior ministry. He has some responsibility for the state police, though we’re not precisely sure what his role is. I would expect that he’s the number-one candidate, simply because he’s in the right position to know about a plan like this, but he’s going to be the trickiest one to contact.” Dean read the biographical notes. Cam Tre Luc had been fifteen in 1968. According to the Army intelligence records, he supplied troop estimates and alerts when units were moving. His information had been rated as “often reliable”—excellent, under the circumstances.

  “He could easily have been a double agent,” said Dean.

  “Supplying our guys with just enough information to keep them happy, while he sucked them dry for the other side.”

  “That’s true for all of them,” said Telach. She tapped her keyboard. “This is Thao Duong. He was a low-level member of the South government who was rehabilitated following the war. He now has a job in one of their commerce agencies, helping facilitate international business. You should be able to meet during the convention. Last but not least is this man, Phuc Dinh. He was a provincial official for the Vietcong who was on the American CIA payroll. He now works for one of the Vietnamese semi-official agencies that govern and facilitate travel in the country. He lives in Quang Nam Province. We don’t have a recent photo. We’ve constructed a computer-assisted aging shot to show what he might look like, but you know how that goes.”

  According to the computer rendering, Phuc Dinh was a bald man, roughly Charlie’s age, with a dagger-shaped scar on his cheek and a scowl on his face. The outline of his face was fuzzy, as if the computer wanted to emphasize the image was guesswork rather than reality.

  “Do you have more information on them?” Dean asked.

  “A little. You can click on those tabs and bring up their entire dossiers. There are files from the war. As you’d imagine, they’re pretty sparse.”

  Dean put his finger on the touch pad at the base of the keyboard, paging back to Tre Cam Luc. The CIA’s war time dossier consisted of a physical description, some notes about his position and the reliability of his information — three on a scale of five — and a very old photo. When he was finished reading, Dean slid his finger down on the touch pad, hesitated for a moment before selecting the next panel.

  Phuc Dinh. DOB 12/4/45. Born, Quang Nam Province.

  Communist Party member since at least 1960.

  ??Leader/lieut of VC cell in Quang nam-Da Nong province, near Laos border.

  Ht. 5–3 wt. 114 pnds…

  brn, brn

  Identifying marks — scar right cheek

  Contact lost Feb 23, 1971

  A small black-and-white photo accompanied the half page of text.

  Dean had seen the photo before — more than thirty years before, when he had been assigned to kill Phuc Dinh.

  An assignment Dean had successfully completed.

  “You OK, Charlie?” asked Telach. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I’m fine,” said Dean. “When’s my plane?”

  27

  The fact that Forester had a girlfriend erased some of the sympathy Lia had felt for him, even as it added more evidence to her suspicion that he hadn’t committed suicide.

  “Very possibly, this woman will have additional information,” Rubens told Lia as he briefed her in his office. “Or some insight into the situation. I’d like you to speak to her and—”

  “I know the drill,” she said. “You don’t have to connect the dots.”

  Rubens frowned and began lecturing her on the “need for decorum” when dealing with “sister agencies.”

  “Ambassador Jackson will assist you in speaking to Ms.

  Rauci, and then deal with the Washington people,” said Rubens. “I’d like you to work in the field, see what you can find. If Forester was murdered, his killer may lead us back to the conspirators.”

  “Peachy.”

  “We want you to look for computers Forester might have used to send e-mail when he went to Pine Plains. Check the hotel where he was found. There is a business center there.” Lia found her thoughts wandering, first to the Forester family, then to Charlie Dean and what he had said about kids, then to Rubens himself.

  Rubens was, by all accounts, independently wealthy. He was also consumed by his job, often working around the clock and sometimes spending several days in a row at the NSA complex. Overseeing Desk Three was just a small part of his duties. It was no wonder then that while fortyish — she had no idea what his actual age was, though she guessed he was younger than he seemed — he appeared to have no life outside of the Agency. No wife, no child.

  Lia didn’t really know that, did she? He didn’t wear a wedding ring, but many men didn’t. She didn’t see any family photos on his walls, only fancy paintings.

  “Excuse me a second,” she interrupted. “Do you have a child?”

  Rubens, though undoubtedly used to her impertinence b
y now, blinked twice.

  “Because I’m wondering,” continued Lia, “if you were

  fighting for custody, and you didn’t get it, would it be enough to kill yourself?”

  “Assuredly not. But I hardly think I am a representative sample, Lia. Keep an open mind — draw no conclusions.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know all that.”

  Rubens frowned, then resumed his lecture on how to behave.

  28

  There were several reasons Dean remembered the mission to kill Phuc Dinh. The first was the oddness of the first name — though it was common enough in Vietnam, the ob-scenity it sounded like in English was not easily forgotten.

  The second was the comparative uniqueness of the mission. “Hunter-kills”—assignments to kill a specific person—

  while not rare for scout snipers in Vietnam, were relatively infrequent; even though Dean was considered good at them, he racked up only a handful during a year’s tour. Most often, he and other snipers worked with Marine units during patrols or sweeps, striking North Vietnamese Army units operating in the area.

  Even as a hunter-kill, the assignment was unique. It was on the Laos border, and the man giving the assignment went out of his way to specify that Phuc Dinh was a priority target “to the exclusion of all others.” Which meant don’t waste your time shooting anybody else until this SOB is toast.

  But for Dean, the assignment stood out for one reason far beyond all the others: it was on this mission that he had lost his best friend in the world, John Longbow.

  Dean had met Corporal John Longbow in Scout Sniper School. Unlike Dean, who’d gotten the assignment directly out of boot camp, Longbow had already been to Vietnam before volunteering to become a sniper. Everyone in Scout Sniper School was a standout Marine. Longbow was a standout among the standouts.

  At first, the instructors tried to push Longbow harder because he was the oldest, but it quickly became clear that he pushed himself harder than even the toughest taskmaster could. By the end of the first week, the sergeant in charge of the unit was relying on Longbow as a fourth instructor.

  Despite all this — or maybe because of it — the other trainees in the unit shied away from him, especially in the few hours they had “off duty” following training. The corporal never said much, and many interpreted his silence as a kind of arrogance. And working with him on the range could be a little demoralizing — he was so precise, so controlled, so perfect, that anyone who mea sured himself against Longbow inevitably came up short.

  Force Recon shared the camp with Scout Sniper School, and there was occasionally some bad blood between the two units. From the snipers’ point of view, the Force Recon trainees were always looking for a fight, trying to prove that they were the real Marines and that everyone else in the service was an embarrassment. They called snipers’ rifle boxes diaper bags; the put-downs increased exponentially in vulgarity from there.

  One night Longbow had just made the chow line when four or five Force Recon show-offs began making fun of him, calling him Tonto and asking if he’d gotten his red face from lipstick. Longbow, who was somewhat touchy about his Indian heritage, ignored them at first, but this only egged them on more. Dean walked into the mess hall to find Longbow surrounded. Not knowing exactly what was going on — but already disliking the other unit for its habit of bragging and abusing the snipers — Dean double-timed to Longbow’s side. The corporal glanced over his shoulder, saw Dean, then turned back and stared at the other men.

  “Oh, whoa, it’s the evil eye,” cracked one of the Force Recon trainees. “I’m feeling weak. Weak.” He fell to the floor. The others convulsed in laughter.

  For a moment, Dean wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Or rather, he was sure Longbow was going to kick the Marine on the ground in the face and after that wasn’t sure what would happen. Dean figured, though, that he would be backing up his fellow platoon member.

  Instead, Longbow stared for a second longer, then turned away. It was a good thing, too — a captain had seen what was going on from the far side of the mess hall and was on his way over. Had there been a fight, all of the men would undoubtedly have been kicked out of their respective schools.

  Dean and Longbow ate together in silence. They never spoke of the incident again. But from that point on, Longbow helped Dean whenever he could, offering him different bits of advice on the range and helping him master some of the finer points of the shooting art, such as compensating for winds above 10 miles an hour.

  They were assigned to the same unit in Vietnam — not much of a surprise, since about two-thirds of the school’s graduates were sent there. After requalification at Da Nang, Dean, Longbow, and four other men they’d trained with joined a unit in an area known as “Arizona Territory.” Their assignments varied, taking them to the Laos border and back, generally to work with Marine companies on sweeps or at forward camps where at night the enemy was so close you could smell the fish he’d had for dinner.

  The origin of the nickname Arizona was in some doubt.

  Some Marines thought it was an apt comparison of the highly dangerous area to the Arizona of the lawless Old West. Others thought it came from the parched pieces of landscape, scorched by Agent Orange. In any event, the nickname was not a compliment.

  Usually the snipers went out in two-man teams, especially when they were working alongside other Marine units conducting patrols or attacking an enemy-held area. At first, the new men were teamed up with more experienced snipers; before long, they were the experienced hands and others the newbies. Dean and Longbow only worked together on CID missions, and then only very important ones for which they were hand-selected by their CO.

  “CID” stood for “Counter Intelligence Department”; the organization was actually a CIA group that ran special operations in the area, often using Marine snipers to get things done. A CID mission could involve gathering intelligence, or it could target a special VC soldier or official for assassination. The mission against Phuc Dinh was the latter.

  * * *

  “Phuc Dinh lives in a village about three miles from the border,” John Rogers told Dean and Longbow. The CIA officer had commandeered their commander’s tent to brief the mission. Rogers had only been in the region for a few months, but that must have seemed like forever to him; he bucked up his facade of courage with gin, and the stink sat heavy on him even at 0800.

  “There’s a series of tunnels in this canyon here,” said Rogers, pointing at the map. He sat in a canvas-backed field chair; Dean and Longbow were across from him on the captain’s rack. “They used to hole up in them on their way south until we got wise to them. Now they go much further west, over the border.”

  Dean stared at the grid map. Experience had shown the relationship between such maps and the real world was often tenuous. Villages were often misnamed and in some cases a considerable distance from where they were supposed to be.

  More important, maps could never tell you the most important thing— where the enemy was.

  “Phuc Dinh goes across the valley into Laos every week to ten days to make contact with units on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He travels at night. Your best bet at catching him alone is on one of those nights.

  “Dinh is your target, to the exclusion of any others.” Dean glanced over at Longbow. The sniper was staring intently at the back of the captain’s tent, zoning in the distance. Dean guessed Longbow was thinking of the mission.

  Rogers rose to leave.

  “Can we go into Laos to get him?” Dean asked Rogers.

  “Technically, no.” Rogers picked up the small briefcase he’d brought with him. “Send a message back that the red hawk has died.”

  * * *

  The mission brief did not include the reason that Phuc Dinh was to be shot. It was obvious that he must be some sort of important VC official, though that alone probably wasn’t enough to arouse CID’s wrath. But reasons were irrelevant to Dean and Longbow; Phuc Dinh was the enemy, and that was all the reason they neede
d to kill anyone.

  The two snipers rode with a Marine company making a sweep about ten miles south of Phuc Dinh’s village; the unit ran into trouble as soon as their he li cop ters landed and Dean and Longbow spent nearly five days with them, the first three within spitting distance of the landing zone. Dean and Longbow didn’t much mind the time itself, since they weren’t sure when Phuc Dinh would be moving, but the delay cost them valuable supplies, most notably about half of the ammo for Longbow’s bolt rifle, a Remington 700. Dean, acting as Longbow’s spotter, though ordinarily a team leader himself, carried an M14 with a starlight scope.

  Finally, the unit managed to extricate itself and got under way. When Dean and Longbow split off from the others, they were just under six miles from Phuc Dinh’s village. The jungle was so thick there that it took a whole day to walk three miles toward it. Then, just as they were settling down for the night, they caught a strong odor of fish on the wind.

  A VC unit was moving through the area, possibly stalking the Marines Dean and Longbow had just left. The smell came from the food the Vietcong ate and meant they were incredibly close, perhaps only a dozen feet away.

  To the Vietcong, Americans smelled like soap, and probably the only thing that saved Dean and Longbow was the fact that they had been in the bush long enough for the grime to overwhelm any lingering Ivory scent. The Vietcong passed them right by.

  There was only one problem. The enemy guerillas were moving in the direction of the unit Dean and Longbow had left.

  The snipers didn’t have a radio. In those days, effective radios were bulky and had to be carried on your back. They were also in short supply. So there was no way of alerting the other unit short of sneaking back and telling them.

  Dean and Longbow discussed what to do. Their orders had priority, clearly—“exclusion of any others” was supposed to cover a situation like this — but they couldn’t leave their fellow Marines to be blindsided. Dean and Longbow circled to the southwest, stalking the stalkers.