Conspiracy (28 page)

“What money?” asked Rockman in Dean's head.

Dean ignored the runner, trying not to show anything to Phuc Dinh, playing out the original bluff as if Forester had told him everything. He was a sniper again, a scout moving silently through the jungle, distractions and emotion in check.

“The war was a long time ago,” prompted Dean as the waiter left. “There were other things to think of.”

“The money was lost,” said Phuc Dinh. “It never arrived at the hamlet.”

“The hamlet was Phu Loc Two, wasn't it?” asked Dean. It
was a guess, but a good one—that was the village where he had stalked Phuc Dinh.

“Yes. Ordinarily a courier would arrive on the tenth of the month. He would bury the money beneath a rock on a trail about three miles out of town.”

“The trail to Laos,” said Dean.

Phuc Dinh nodded. “And then one month, it did not arrive.”

“Which month?”

“September 1971.”

Dean sipped some of the tea. The restaurant was not air-conditioned, and the temperature must have been well into the eighties, but despite the heat, it felt refreshing.

“There were complaints and threats from some of the leaders in the area,” Phuc Dinh said. “A rebellion. I sent a message and requested that the liaison come and explain what had happened, but he would not come. I heard later that he was killed by a rocket attack.”

“What was his name?”

“Greenfield.” Phuc Dinh looked up at the wall behind Dean, as if reading the answer off it. “He called himself Green. But that wasn't his first name.”

“Was he a soldier?”

“No. Soldiers—Marines—were used as the couriers. But Green was a civilian—CIA, I assume.”

“Was his name Green
feld
?” asked Dean.

“Maybe.”

“Jack Greenfeld was a CIA officer who worked in this area. He ran a number of programs,” said Dean, who wanted the Art Room to know the background. “He worked in that area. Then he was killed by a rocket attack. He was replaced by a man named Rogers.”

“You're familiar with the area?” said Phuc Dinh.

“Just some of the history.”

“Maybe it is the same person. Green. I don't know what the arrangements were on the American side,” said Phuc Dinh. “Only that payments were distributed to different elders.”

“We're researching this, Charlie,” said Rockman. “Keep him talking. What does this have to do with Forester?”

Dean had already guessed the answer to Rockman's question.

“What happened after the money stopped?” Dean asked Phuc Dinh.

Instead of answering, the Vietnamese official looked back at Dean. Their eyes met and held each other for a moment.

“Did you serve during the war, Mr. Dean?” Phuc Dinh asked.

“I did.”

“Then you understand.” Phuc Dinh refilled his teacup. “One had always to cut his own path.”

“So when the money stopped, you began working with the VC?”

“One works with whomever one can.”

Dean suspected that Phuc Dinh had been working with the Vietcong long before the payments stopped; double-dealing was common. But it could have been that he changed sides then. By now it was irrelevant anyway.

“Did you know a man named McSweeney?” Dean asked. “He would have been a captain. He was with the strategic hamlet program.”

Phuc Dinh stared at the wall once more. “The name is not familiar,” he said finally.

“Did you have any contact with the strategic hamlet program? Before the payments stopped?”

“The couriers were Marines. Maybe they were that program?”

“Did any Marines live with you in your village?”

“You say you are familiar with the history of the area. Would Marines have lasted long in that village?”

Phuc Dinh gave him the names of the provincial leaders who benefited from the payoffs. The list was long, though the sums Phuc Dinh mentioned were relatively small—for the most part, a few hundred went to each. Still, that would have represented considerable money in Vietnam.

It probably bought a lot of AK-47s and rockets, Dean thought bitterly.

Obviously, someone decided that the money the village
leaders were getting would be more useful in his pocket. Was it the Vietcong, the South Vietnamese, or someone else?

Forester must have thought it was connected to McSweeney somehow.

Maybe he suspected McSweeney.

Or maybe McSweeney knew who did it, and was in danger because of that. Maybe the fact that he was targeted had nothing to do with his running for President.

“That's all I know,” said Phuc Dinh.

“Do you have the e-mail Forester sent you?” Dean asked.

He shook his head.

“How did he find you?”

“I am not sure. I am not a famous man.” He broke into a grin for the first time since they'd met. “Maybe he met someone with a long memory. He claimed to have found my name in a government directory.”

“Is that possible?”

“Yes. I have contact with foreign banks. I have visited Beijing—I am in the directories. But how he knew to look, that I do not know. He asked if I knew anything about missing money. He named the date the payment should have arrived. That was all. I will not come to your country,” Phuc Dinh added. “I cannot help you more than this.”

Dean took a sip of tea, savoring the liquid in his mouth as if it were expensive Scotch.

“What did you do during the war, Mr. Dean?” asked Phuc Dinh.

“I was a Marine,” Dean said. “I served in this province.”

“It was not a good place to be a soldier.”

“I'd imagine it was much more difficult to be a civilian.”

“Impossible, I would say.”

“There was an ambush near your village, Phu Loc Two,” said Dean. “You were targeted. Some reports said you were killed.”

A faint smile appeared on Phuc Dinh's face, then faded into something close to sadness, and then blank stoicism. He scratched his ear but said nothing.

“How did you escape?” Dean asked. “Weren't you shot?”

“Another man went in my place. We used many tricks of deception at the time, to confuse spies who might be watching.”

“The dead man wasn't you?”

Phuc Dinh shook his head.

“But he had a scar like yours.”

“When the money did not arrive, that was a sign,” said Phuc Dinh, ignoring Dean's comment. “From that point on, we were on our guard. The ambush was a few months later, but we were still watching.”

“There was a photo in a file,” said Dean. “The man had a scar like yours.”

Phuc Dinh pointed to it.

“Yes, like that,” said Dean.

“A time such as that brings us to the lowest point of our existence.”

“Charlie, ask him about money transfers,” Rockman interrupted. “Ask him if he had any access to bank records.”

Dean ignored the runner, staring instead at Phuc Dinh. He wasn't a ghost, not in the literal sense. And yet he was in every other way. He had come to Dean from the past, conjuring up an entire world that Dean had passed through years ago, an unsettled world that continued to haunt him, much as he denied it.

Dean, too, was a ghost, haunting Phuc Dinh's world, though the former VC official didn't know it.

“I lost a friend on that mission,” said Dean softly. “A good friend.”

“I lost many friends during the war as well.” Phuc Dinh lowered his head. “The man who went in my place that day was my brother. The scars you noticed were burns from a French vicar for stealing his food when we were five and six. He used the same poker to mark us both.”

 

“
DIDN'T KNOW YOU
were a gun nut!”

Startled, Jimmy Fingers turned to his right and saw Sam Iollo, one of the capitol police supervisors, standing nearby.

“I hope I'm not a nut,” said Jimmy Fingers.

“What is that little peashooter you got there?” asked Iollo, pointing at Jimmy Fingers' pistol.

Jimmy held out a Colt Detective Special, a .38-caliber two-inch snubby. Though old, the weapon was in showroom shape, its blued finish gleaming and the wood bright and polished.

“Pretty,” said Iollo. “What, you don't trust us protecting you?”

“Of course I trust you,” said Jimmy Fingers.

“Hey, just busting on you there, Counselor.” Iollo seemed to think that everyone who worked for a senator was a lawyer. He gave Jimmy Fingers a serious look. “Can you shoot a rifle?”

For a brief moment, Jimmy Fingers was filled with fear. Surely this wasn't an idle question, nor an idle meeting.

“Of course I can use a rifle,” he told Iollo.

“Maybe you'll want to come out to the annual turkey shoot then. Good food, and the competition's fun. If you're as good with a rifle as you are with that pistol, you might take yourself home a bird.”

“Maybe I will. Let me know when it's coming up.”

Jimmy Fingers started to leave, but Iollo held out his hand to stop him.

“Tell me the truth now—you think he's going to be President?” Iollo asked.

“Without a doubt.”

“He is looking real good. Be careful no one shoots at him again, though. Next time, they may not miss.”

“Yes,” said Jimmy Fingers grimly, before walking away.

 

DEAN PUSHED BACK
in the chair as Phuc Dinh rose.

“I have enjoyed our meeting,” Phuc Dinh said perfunctorily, his tone suggesting the opposite.

“Thank you,” Dean told him. “I appreciate your time. And your honesty.”

Once more, a faint hint of a smile appeared on Phuc Dinh's face, only to dissolve. As Dean watched him walk toward the door, it occurred to him that it would be an easy thing to shoot him, completing the mission he had been assigned thirty-five years before.

But Phuc Dinh had not caused Longbow's death any more than Dean had.

Meeting his Vietnamese enemy reminded Dean not of the war but of how much had changed in the intervening years. As a sniper, he'd seen Vietnam, the world, as black-and-white. Now he saw only colors, infinite colors. He knew his job and his duty, and would perform both. But he no longer had the luxury the teenager had of looking at targets through a crosshaired scope. What he saw was weighted with the time he'd come through, the miles he'd walked.

The ghosts he'd shared space with, haunted by and, in turn, haunting.

 

“
IT WAS A
CIA program. The Marines were involved because they were in the area,” Hernes Jackson told Rubens. “I have to say that there wasn't much online from the CIA. I found nearly everything I needed from the Department of Defense. I've made appointments to look at the paper records as well. Possibly that will reveal more.”

Jackson explained that the CIA had sent “support” payments to loyal village elders during the war. The payments were essentially bribes, and there were few checks and balances in the program. The CIA worked with local military units to arrange and protect couriers; depending on the sector, Army Special Forces, Marines, and even SEALs had been involved. In the area of Phu Loc 2, the CIA worked with Marines attached to the strategic hamlet program.

In the case cited by Phuc Dinh, one set of payments totaling $250,000 had gone missing during the last year of the war. This had happened after the man who had been coordinating the payments—Greenfeld, as Dean had said—was killed in a rocket attack on a Marine camp he'd been visiting. Three payments were missed in the interim, making the amount carried by the new courier extra large and probably extra tempting.

A South Vietnamese officer acted as the courier, with two Marines assigned as his escort to Phu Loc 2. There was an ambush. The Marines and the South Vietnamese officer were separated. Neither the money nor the South Vietnamese officer was ever seen again.

“The Marines just let him run off?” said Rubens.

“No,” said Jackson. “There was an ambush. They came under heavy attack. According to the Marines, he was obliterated by a mortar. They ended up calling for an air evac.”

The guards were Marine Sergeant Bob Malinowski and Marine Sergeant Robert Tolong.

“Malinowski was wounded in the ambush and died back in the field hospital, or en route,” said Jackson. “One of the reports says that Tolong was wounded as well, but if so the wounds were minor, because he rejoined his unit immediately afterward. The CIA wanted to talk to Sergeant Tolong, apparently because he was the last American to see the cash. I am reading a bit between the lines.”

“Perfectly logical assumption,” said Rubens. “Go on.”

Before the CIA could debrief him, Tolong volunteered to go on a patrol, checking on a hamlet team that had missed its call-in the day before. The unit was attacked in the afternoon of their first day out, a few miles west of Tam Ky. Tolong and another man named Reginald Gordon were separated from the main group. The firefight continued well into the night. In the morning, the fighting resumed when some helicopters approached, and it wasn't until late afternoon that they were extricated. Gordon and Tolong were among the missing.

“About ten days later, Sergeant Gordon showed up at the base camp of a unit about thirty miles to the west,” continued Jackson. “Tolong, he said, had been seriously wounded and died a few days after the ambush. He'd buried him, but wasn't sure where. The Marines sent two different patrols into the area, but never found him.”

“Did the CIA find the money?” asked Rubens.

“Doesn't appear so. As I said, I'll have to look through their paper records to be sure,” said Jackson. “The men were assigned to the courier job by a Captain McSweeney. His name was on some of the reports, including two about the ambush.”

“Senator McSweeney.”

“Apparently. One other thing I found interesting,” added Jackson. “Reading between the lines, it seems that the CIA
later concluded that the courier had been set up by one of the village leaders, who was working with the Vietcong. The leader was Phuc Dinh.”