Please verify.”
Sixty long seconds elapsed. Finally she spoke again. “Sir Richard, please.” The
number dialed was obviously not one that was in general circulation; it was
unnecessary to specify to whomever had answered that it was an emergency, for
that assumption would be automatic. Verification no doubt involved both voice
print analysis and a telephony trace to the ANSI signature unique to every North
American telephone line, including those that used a sat-com uplink.
“Sir Richard,” she said, her voice defrosting slightly. “I have the name of an
HMP-prisoner by the name of Sean, S-E-A-N, Hennessy, double n, double s.
Probably an SIB apprehension, approximately three months ago. Status: arraigned,
not convicted, awaiting trial.” Her eyes sought out his for confirmation, and
Janson nodded.
“We’ll need to have him released at once and on a plane bound for … ” She
paused, reconsidering. “There’s an LF jet docked at Gatwick. Get him on board
immediately. Call me back within forty-five minutes with an estimated arrival
time.”
Janson shook his head, marveling. “Sir Richard” had to be Richard Whitehead, the
director of Britain’s Special Investigations Branch. But what most impressed him
was her coolly instructive tone. Whitehead was to call back to let her know not
whether the request could be accommodated but when the request would be
accommodated. As Novak’s seniormost deputy, she was obviously well known to
political elites around the world. He had been preoccupied with the advantages
enjoyed by his Anuran adversaries, but Novak’s people were hardly without
resources themselves.
Janson also admired Lang’s instinctive respect for operational security. No
final destination was divulged; the Liberty Foundation jet at Gatwick would just
need to provide a proximate flight plan. Only once it had crossed into
international airspace would its pilot need to know the rendezvous point Janson
had determined, in the Nicobar archipelago.
Now Janson started to go over a list of military equipment with one of Lang’s
associates, a man named Gerald Hochschild, who served as a de facto logistics
officer. To each request, Hochschild responded not with a yes or no, but with a
time interval: twelve hours, four hours, twenty hours. The amount of time that
would be necessary to locate and ship the equipment to the Nicobar rendezvous.
It was almost too easy, Janson mused. Then he realized why. While human rights
organizations held conferences to discuss the problem of the small-arms trade in
Sierre Leone or the traffic in military helicopters in Kazakhstan, Novak’s
foundation had a more direct method for taking the noxious hardware off the
market: it simply acquired the stuff. As Hochschild confirmed, as long as the
model was discontinued and therefore irreplaceable, the Liberty Foundation would
buy it, warehouse it, and eventually recycle it as scrap or, in the case of
military transport, have it retooled for civilian purposes.
Thirty minutes later, a green light on the telephone blinked. Marta Lang picked
up the handset. “So he’s en route? Condition?” There was a pause, and then she
said, “We’ll assume a departure time in less than sixty minutes, in that case.”
Her voice softened. “You’ve been a dear. We couldn’t appreciate it more. Really.
And you be sure to send my love to Gillian, will you? We all missed you in Davos
this year. You can be certain that Peter gave the PM an earful about that! Yes.
Yes. We’ll catch up properly—soon.”
A woman of parts, Janson thought admiringly.
“There’s a reasonable chance that your Mr. Hennessy will beat you to the
rendezvous,” Marta told him immediately after she hung up.
“My hat’s off,” Janson said simply.
Through the windows, the sun was a golden orb, cushioned by white,
fluffy-looking clouds. Though they were flying toward the setting sun, the
passage of time was keeping pace. When Lang’s eyes lowered to her watch, he knew
she was looking at more than simply the time of day. She was looking at the
number of hours Peter Novak had left. She met his gaze and paused for a moment
before speaking. “Whatever happens,” she said, “I want to thank you for what
you’ve given us.”
“I’ve given you nothing,” Janson protested.
“You’ve given us something of quite substantial value,” she said. “You’ve given
us hope.”
Janson started to say something about the realities, the long odds, the abundant
downside scenarios, but he stopped himself. There was a higher pragmatism to be
respected. At this stage of a mission, false hope was better than none at all.
CHAPTER THREE
The memories were thirty years old, but they could have been yesterday’s. They
unspooled in his dreams at night—always the night before an operation, fueled by
repressed anxiety—and though they started and ended at different points, it was
as though they were from the same continuous loop of tape.
In the jungle was a base. In the base was an office. In the office was a desk.
On the desk was a sheet of paper.
It was, in fact, the list for that date’s Harassment & Interdiction fire.
Possible VC rocket attack, launch site grid coordinates AT384341, between 0200
and 0300 this morning.
A VC political cadre meeting, Loc Ninh village, BT415341, at 2200 this evening.
VC infiltration attempt, below Go Noi River, AT404052, between 2300 and 0100.
That pile of well-thumbed slips on Lieutenant Commander Alan Demarest’s desk was
filled with similar reports. They were supplied by informants to ARVN officials,
who then passed them along to the Military Assistance Command-Vietnam, MACV.
Both the informants and the reports were assigned a letter and a number
assessing their reliability. Nearly all the reports were classified as F/6:
reliability of agent indeterminate, reliability of report indeterminate.
Indeterminate was a euphemism. Reports came from double agents, from VC
sympathizers, from paid informants, and sometimes just from villagers who had
scores to settle and had figured out an easy way to get someone else to destroy
a rival’s paddy dike.
“These are supposed to be the basis for our Harassment and Interdiction fire,”
Demarest had said to Janson and Maguire. “But they’re bullshit. Some four-eyed
Charlie in Hanoi wrote these for our sake, and piped them through the pencil
dicks at MACV. These, gentlemen, are a waste of artillery. Know how I know?” He
held up a filmy slip, fluttered it in the air like a flag. “There’s no blood on
this paper.” A twelfth-century choral work played through the tiny speakers of
an eight-track tape system, one of Demarest’s small enthusiasms.
“You get me a goddamn VC courier,” Demarest went on, scowling. “No, you get me
an even dozen. If they’ve got paper on them, bring it back—certified with VC
blood. Prove to me that military intelligence is not a contradiction in terms.”
That evening, six of them had rolled over the gunwales of the fiberglass-hulled
STAB, the SEAL tactical assault boat, and into the bath-warm shallow water of
Ham Luong. They paddled through an eighth of a mile of riverine silt and landed
on the pear-shaped island. “Come back with prisoners, or don’t come back,” their
CO had told them. With luck, they would do so: the island, Noc Lo, was known to
be controlled by Viet Cong. But luck had lately been in scarce supply.
The six men wore black pajamas, like their foe. No dog tags, no signs of rank or
unit, of the fact that they were a SEAL team, of the even more pertinent fact
that they were Demarest’s Devils. They had spent two hours making their way
through the island’s dense vegetation, alert to any sign of the enemy—sounds,
footprints, even the smell of the nuoc cham sauce their enemy doused over their
food.
They were divided into three pairs, two of them in front, traveling ten yards
apart; two of them serving as rear guard, in charge of the forty-pound M60,
ready to provide cover.
Janson was on point, paired with Hardaway, a tall, thickly built man with dark
brown skin and wide-spaced eyes. He kept his head close-shorn with electric
clippers. Hardaway’s tour of duty was up in sixty days, and he was getting antsy
about returning stateside. A month ago, he had torn out a skin-mag centerfold
and divided it into numbered squares. Each day, he filled in one of the squares.
When they were all filled in, he would take his centerfold girl back home and
trade her in for a real one. That was Hardaway’s idea, anyway.
Now, three hundred yards inland, Hardaway picked up a contraption made out of
tire rubber and canvas, and showed it to Janson with a questioning look. They
were mud shoes. The light-bodied VC used them to glide tracklessly through
swampy terrain. Recently discarded?
Janson called for thirty seconds of silent vigilance. The team froze in place,
alert to any noise that was out of the ordinary. Noc Lo was in the middle of a
free-fire zone, where firing was permitted at any time without restriction, and
there was no escape from the muffled sounds of distant batteries, mortars