Assignment - Cong Hai Kill (5 page)

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Item
:
Taped interview, Col. Ralph G. Cheyney, USMC Ret. Taped at home, Seattle,
Washington, 12 Dec. KA-105 TT. “Sergeant Orris Lantern was one of the
finest NCO’s we had in Special Forces B Zone along the Cambodian border. He
symbolized everything that makes the U.S. Marine Corps and the Special Forces
units the first-line troops in defense of our nation. He was brave beyond the
call of duty, dedicated, imaginative, devoted to his men -and
the Meos whom he organized for unorthodox warfare. Yes, he was a strict
disciplinarian and brooked no foul-ups, but that’s what makes the Marines the
fine body of men they are, sir. If the ancient disciplines of the Spartans were
remembered and followed in our nation today, we might—His personal record? As
commanding officer at B Group, I was proud to have him under my command. I am
certain the V.C. did not take him alive at Luc Bat. As I understand it, he was
last seen serving one of our .81 mm. mortars at point-blank range. He was a
credit to us all. His squad? I understand only four survived.”

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Item
:
Taped interview, Sgt. Frederick D. Tompkinson, now a meat inspector,
Boston, Mass. Jan. 20 Int.14/K: “Orris was a yellow-eyed cat-footed,
slow-tongued, sadistic, vicious, un-American, stinking deserter who left us at
Luc Bat the first chance he had and went over to Uncle Ho and the V.C. on his
own. He was a nut. He hated America and everything in it, and the first time he
read one of Uncle Ho’s comic books out of Hanoi, he decided he was fighting on
the wrong side of the war. He acted like a hillbilly who just had a holy
revelation. He as much as told me so. . . . Me? Sure, I had trouble with him in
the A team. He made fun of my Boston accent. But everybody had trouble with
him. He loved guns, for instance. He knew every sterile weapon we used for goin’
over the border, you know? He could field-strip Russian AK’s or Swedish K’s and
handle heavy machine guns like the MG-34 from Germany or the Russian 7.62 RPD
as Well as our own 60- and 81-mm. mortars. He loved guns like other guys went
for omen or booze. He liked to see blood spilled. When the V.C.’s cut up a
village and left the people in their own bloody guts, he’d do the same when we
caught up with some of them black-pajamaed murderers. . . . Children? Yes,
that was a funny thing. Every village we hit, he had the kids following him
like he was a Pied Piper. . . . But he was chicken at heart. He sold us all
out, walked us deliberately into the ambush at Luc Bat so he could turn his coat.
What? I don’t care what the colonel says. The colonel had a rod up his rear all
the time. Sure, I’ll swear to every word I said.”

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Item
:
TOP SECRET. Report from Group Paratroop Command 44, Kuo-Tse, Intelligence
Unit F, Captain Minh Tse-Ling commanding, Taipeh. Captain Minh
operated as a civilian employee of K Section and was dropped into Hunan
Province of the Chinese Communist People’s Republic for data on troop
dispositions toward Hanoi on 12 March. Captured, tried, confined to notorious
Grass Basket Prison at Peiping for five months. Convinced captors of innocence
through relatives who swore oaths for him. Released, escaped via Macau, Hong
Kong. Report on Orris Lantern follows:

“Of all American
renegades in Grass Basket, Orris Lantern was most favored. We
understood he had been transferred from Hanoi in North Vietnam at own request
for ‘education and indoctrination.’ He went regularly to prison Marxist school
as volunteer student of Leninist philosophy and politico-economic attitudes.
His Socialist dialectics were always correct according to the Peiping line. He
received double rations to report political diversionism of other
student-prisoners.

“No, he was transferred
from Grass Basket before my release. No, I do not know where he was assigned.
No, I never heard of his being coded as ‘Yellow Torch.’ ”

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Item
:
Précis of Analysis, Cong Hai movement this date, State Department
SEAS Division, Group Chief Henry Talbot-Smyth:

The agrarian reform
movement currently reported in southernmost provinces must be construed as an
indigenous political grouping of peasant farmers and mountain tribes whose
avowed aims for self-determination and economic reorganization seem in keeping
with this government’s determination to aid and assist according to Policy
George paper. While alarmists point to the Cong Hai as a counterpart
of the Viet Cong and the Viet Minh movements in Indochina, it is a known fact
that land reform has been long overdue since evacuation by former French
planters. Their demand for liberty should be respected and it is recommended
that agricultural, economic, and financial aid teams be organized to assist
their natural and econo-historical destinies.”

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Item
:
Classified AA Priority.

Via: Cable Scrambler J

From: Major T.M.K. Muong,
Bangkok Security

To: General Dickinson
McFee, Urgent Attention.

Subject: Operation
Yellow Torch

Yellow Torch positive
identify Orris Lantern, ex-sergeant USMC, Special Forces A Group
BORAD, ex-prisoner-defector to Communist China via Hanoi, ' record confirmed
eleven months Tsao Lan-Tse Prison, Peiping. First operation
suspected Mekong Delta ambush Din Din. Military advisor chief Cong
dissident mountain tribes related Montagnards Vietnam-Laos border
areas. Fomented riots, burned village rice depots, vanished along
Cambodian-Thai border. Yellow Torch positively heads terrorist Cong Hai infiltrating
from Chaine des Cardamomes and interior rivers. Raided
villages Gon Xup, Chin Ku, Im Bhong, casualties seventy
males, forty females, nine children. All property burned, stolen. Recruitment
of two hundred twenty-seven tribal males into fighting cadres of Cong Hai.
Tea plantations destroyed: three. Four others out of communication, all
French-owned. Upland river routesblacked out.

It is rumored that
difficulties in command have caused Yellow Torch to  consider a
re-defection to the West. If so, he is wanted as a criminal against the Thai
people. If he surrenders, he must be remanded to the Thai government at Bangkok
for immediate trial and punishment.

Item
:
Memo to ComSEAT, NSA HQ, Ft. Meade.

From: General Dickinson
McFee, K Section

To: Supervisor 10

Subject: Yellow Torch.

It is requested further
details and File Code K/A 105 in toto be transmitted my office no
delay.

Item Stamped:

REQUEST DENIED

                                               
 
6

DURELL returned the
dossiers by special messenger before turning in that night. He was awake a long
time, thinking of Deirdre. If she were a true professional in the business, he
Would have slept soundly and not worried about it. As a pro, you accepted the
risks and you expected no help, comfort, or aid from your teammate if you
faltered at a point that might jeopardize the job. You knew you could be
abandoned at any time, without apology or excuses. The assignment always came
first.

But if anything happened
to Deirdre, and he had to make such a choice . . .

In the darkness of that
morning he crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed; but he did not
touch her. He knew she was awake from the quickening of her breath, although
she did not move.

“Deirdre, please check
out with McFee in time to quit. Before we must leave. Do it for me.”

She spoke in a whisper.
“I’m sorry, Sam. I feel the same about this job as you do. But I’m needed,
because Anna-Marie Danat won’t trust anyone but me to negotiate Orris Lantern’s
surrender. I have to convince her that we’ll treat him decently.”

“That may not be
easy—with Major T.M.K. Muong waiting to string him up.”

“And you to help hang
him up,” she added quietly.

“If it’s possible, I’ll
bring him back alive.” He touched her and bent over her.

“Sam, don’t.”

“You can’t be serious,
after all the times—”

“I am serious. I must
prove this to you, don’t you see?”

“No. I don’t
understand.”

“Well, you will.” He
thought she laughed, but he wasn’t sure, and anger and rejection took him back
to his uncomfortable couch across the room.

In the morning they flew
Pan Am Flight N0. 1 Westbound. Diplomatic and business identity papers
waited for them at Dulles International. No bands played to see them off.
Deirdre was quiet and remote during the long hours of their flight after the
sun.

At the Bangkok Airport,
Major Muong met them in an official car and eased their way through
immigration registration on Surisak Road. From the reception, Durell
wondered why they hadn’t been met by a brass band and signs to announce their
identity. Deirdre was enchanted by the flat, sprawling city with its endless
temples, its streets of bedlam crammed with buses and 
samlors
, the
canals with their sampans and the houses rooted with thatch or red tile. Durell
went through the necessary business of changing their dollars to bahts and satangs,
then checked in at the Embassy. When Deirdre later requested separate quarters
in their future hotel reservations, Major T.M.K. Muong, a tall, thin,
brown Thai with reserved dark eyes, bowed politely and agreed it might be
possible to arrange.

Anna-Marie Danat was
waiting for them at the Palace Hotel in Giap Pnom when they
arrived by means of an antiquated DC-3 that served the distant coastal town
twice weekly. The heat struck them like the fiat of an axe across the back of
the neck, but Deirdre remained cool and distant. She promptly engaged in a long
and girlish chat of reminiscences with the French girl, recalling their school
days in Maryland, and after dinner,

Durell had talked with
Anna-Marie about the arrangements Orris Lantern had made to return to
United States jurisdiction.

In view of the dossiers
he had read, he found it difficult to believe in Lantern’s change of heart. He
suspected deception, danger, a trap somewhere. It did not add up otherwise, to
his professional point of view, and he did not hide his hard suspicion from the
blonde French girl.

That was when Anna-Marie
fled the hotel and almost got him killed.

                                               
 
7

WHEN the telephone rang,
Durell was still checking the balcony of the hotel room to which he had
returned With Anna-Marie. There was nothing to see outside but the embankment
road, which was called Suriwong Street. Beyond was the tropical sea
and the lights of the single rusted tramp freighter, and a few shadows under
the Mauritius palms that flanked the hotel’s entrance. He thought his window
was being watched by a coolie with a 
samlor
 who did not seem
terribly eager for passengers; but he couldn’t be sure.

The telephone continued
to ring, and Anna-Marie said in a small, subdued voice: “Aren’t you going to
answer it?”

“In a moment.”

“It might be Deirdre—”

“She’ll wait.”

“Or the police. You
killed a man-”

He looked at her, and
she shuddered. She still wore the sodden white dress she’d had on When she
fell, with an assist from him, into the carp pond of her “Uncle Chang‘s” house.
Durell regarded her with some perplexity. He had tried to win her confidence,
but right from the start there was something about her that rang little warning
bells in the back of his mind. Perhaps he’d been annoyed by her gush of talk
with Deirdre, the way she’d

ignored his impatient
questions, and then replied to them grudgingly. Although she was small and
petite, she was full and ripe and woman enough to play Delilah to Orris Lantern’s
Samson. But he wasn’t sure of anything except that the whole affair had begun
with trouble and the unnecessary complication of Deirdre-at least, he told
himself, he thought she was far better off at home, even if McFee didn’t—and
now he had an emotional and disturbed young Frenchwoman on his hands who gave
every evidence of turning hostile, of becoming a handicap instead of an asset.

“It’s my fault,”
Anna-Marie blurted suddenly.

“What is?”

“That the poor man is
dead. The one you drowned. It seemed so—so ruthless—”

“He tried his best to
kill 
me
,” Durell said.

“And how many others
have you killed, Mr. Durell?”

“I don’t know,” he said
honestly.

“But always for your
‘business"?”

“Yes.”

“Killing is your
business?”

“Only when necessary.”

“And you will kill my Orris.
I know it. I see it in your eyes. You are cruel, and you will hunt him down
like an animal.” All at once she covered her face and began to weep. “I should
never have listened to him or encouraged him to trust me.”