Memorial Bridge (50 page)

"It's the Airmobile Division, General."

"That's even worse. That's my point! Does the President know what going to war without a declared national emergency means? It means that any soldier whose enlistment is up in the next six months will not ship out. Without the mobilization those enlistments cannot be extended. Does the President know what that means? Fifty percent of the famous First Air Cav will not be going overseas, and that means that green recruits will be going instead. The best-trained soldiers will be staying at Fort Bragg, and half of those going into combat will not have had any airmobile training! Does the President know that?"

"I don't know." The look on Basset's face said he himself didn't know it.

"Don't you think someone should tell him?"

"General, the President is the commander in chief."

"We are his military advisors! Jesus Christ, Basset, he can't make decisions about sending what he called 'the flower of our youth' into combat based on what Senator Fulbright tells him."

At last Basset stood up, mirroring Dillon from his side of the desk. The air between them curdled. "Look," he said wearily, "don't come in
here ranting at me about this. General Cannon, the Air Cav commander, issued a statement saying he and his men were honored to be tapped and enthusiastic about going. I didn't hear him complaining about lack of training."

"Cannon and his men are combat soldiers and brave ones, no doubt. Their job isn't to shape policy. Ours is, yours and mine. We're not Wall Street lawyers looking for loopholes in the tax law so our client can squeak through without paying. We're supposed to help the President fulfill the public trust, and that trust begins with GIs. Our job is to help the President shape policy that doesn't waste the lives of ill-prepared or outnumbered American soldiers, no matter how valiant they might be."

"That's right. And it's a job that begins, whether we like it or not, with Taylor and Westmoreland, who aren't exactly famous for wasting the lives of GIs. The President's announcement yesterday embodied what they want."

"Maybe."

"Oh? You have reason to doubt that they're on board?"

"No. But they are under political pressure too, I assume. We're not."

"You say 'political' as if it's a dirty word."

Dillon stared at Basset impassively, but instead of the exhausted staffer's, for an instant he saw the face of Mayor Ed Kelly, Raymond Buckley's mentor.

"But politics isn't dirty, General. That's a blind spot you fellows have here. Politics is just getting people to work together, and when it comes to this kind of war, political programs are the key. This isn't war the way American generals have seen it before, that's all. I think Taylor and Westmoreland, for two, understand that."

"Do you think politics in Saigon is different from what it is in, say, Chicago?"

Basset laughed. "If Richard J. Daley were running the show in Nam, he'd call in some markers and that would be that."

"Maybe so." Dillon smiled, wanting Basset to think he'd won. Basset knew nothing about Daley, nothing about markers. These brilliant analyzers, these geniuses from Harvard, these smartest men in America who'd imposed themselves on Washington and on the government and on this war, they were just provincials of another kind, Dillon thought. What made them dangerous was their assumption that they knew everything already. Sean Dillon knew damn well that he didn't, and his first
job now was to find out what was really happening. He leaned toward Basset and lowered his voice. "Look, I'm the guy who is supposed to keep the picture in focus. Get me over there. Cut me orders to Vietnam. This thing is getting away from us. Send me on fact-finding for OSD. You can do that."

Basset shook his head. "You know the policy, General. We can't risk someone with your clearances in a war zone unnecessarily. You could be captured."

"McNamara just went."

"Him and half of the Old Guard. You wouldn't have a regiment for personal security. It's out."

Dillon felt fevered. "That's not the reason, and you know it."

"It's one reason, General, and that's enough. You thinking of another?" Basset nodded smugly. "Collection assets are not in DIR-DIA's purview."

"I never conceded that."

"The secretary conceded it for you."

"Look, these are the squabbles of bureaucrats. The secretary won the first battle of DIA, and it was over that letter
D.
The chiefs wanted the agency called 'Military' Intelligence, but he insisted on 'Defense' as a way of building his own primacy right into the title. Well, I need him to assert that primacy now, and if I can't get on his schedule, I need you to make the case for me. If there's divergence between what the JCS sees happening in Vietnam and what Westmoreland sees, I'm the one who should find out what it's about. Get McNamara to send me."

"Westmoreland doesn't want you near the place, and neither do the chiefs. They don't want you out of Washington."

"What kind of military advice can the President be getting if the men charged with giving it to him are divided?"

"Nobody hears the President complaining about advice."

"Not now, he isn't, when he has unanimous NSC meetings. But he'll howl later when his policy is a disaster. Ask General Taylor. He was at bat when the JCS didn't tell Kennedy the truth about the Bay of Pigs. None of the military chiefs believed the CIA plan would work, but they never warned the President because they thought he'd bought it already. And now it's happening again. Not a flag officer in this building thinks the way to go in Vietnam is the piecemeal build-up the President described, and very few think stabilizing the regime in Saigon should
continue as our priority. Saigon won't be stable until we get the North Vietnamese off its back. The working group is unanimous on this—hit Hanoi and Haiphong, now and hard. Preempt the Chinese. Push ARVN aside and take over in the South, a quick victory, in and out. It's the only way."

"You heard the speech. On the President's scale that's the extremist way."

"Right. I forgot. The Goldilocks principle: one too soft, one too hard and one just right. The President champions the moderate course midway between the peaceniks and the warmongers."

"Not only the President, General. A unanimous NSC."

"Unanimous in seeing what Johnson wanted and giving it to him. There's a long tradition of that here. I know all about it, the goddamn chain of command, and 'chain' is right. Every military man's mind is shackled by it. His fate depends totally on pleasing the guy just above him, so the system rewards dishonesty and cowardice. People who finally make chief are just more adept at it than anybody else."

Basset shrugged again. "That's not Mr. McNamara's problem. Or Bundy's. Or Rusk's. Or Rostow's. None of them are military, but when the crunch came they saw things the way the President did at that meeting. In fact, General Dillon, that's how our system works. The President decides. The rest of us execute."

"Execute." Dillon nodded slowly. "Is that the word you'll use in drafting the secretary's personal letters of condolence to the families of KIAs? You'd better cut some stencils, because you're going to have to start using a mimeographed form letter when the Air Cav rookies hit the zone."

"Anything else, General?"

"Just tell the secretary I want to see him."

"He's very busy. You can understand."

"Funny thing, Basset. That is exactly what General Wheeler's exec said to me yesterday. Of course, he feels entitled, since by his lights, despite my uniform, I belong to the Office of the Secretary of Defense."

"Maybe you should get the message then."

"What message?"

"We all get DIA reviews and estimates. On Southeast Asia they have become utterly predictable, all too consistently negative. You glorify Ho Chi Minh's abilities, and denigrate Nguyen Khanh's."

"And I denigrated Big Minh's before him, and Ngo Dinh Diem's before him, and pretty soon I'll be denigrating a tin soldier named Nguyen Cao Ky. Khanh won't survive no matter what we do for him. None of them will. If we keep our chips on Saigon's racketeer-politicians, we lose. It's that simple. DIA estimates are not what's negative. What's negative is what's happening over there."

"You should know that Taylor and Westmoreland both have recently disparaged DIA analysis. Mr. McNamara is worried that your inflexibility is costing you your effectiveness."

"I hear regularly from my air force colleagues how my reports let them down, but they are the only ones. Is it too much to ask why other critics of DIA don't bring their complaints to me?"

"In fact, Mr. McNamara, when I spoke to him this morning, asked me to raise the issue of negativity with you. He said he would hate to see you shut out."

Shut out. Dillon recognized the words for the threat they were, the ultimate threat for men like him. It's time to get on board, General, or the train will leave without you. Johnson himself—that's what his news conference had really been—calling down the track, All aboard! The men of the NSC had heard, Basset had heard, and now Dillon was hearing. Get aboard or else you'll be shut out. This was the first time in eighteen years Dillon had heard that threat directed explicitly at himself. Year after year he had been brought in, not shut out, and by no one more powerfully than McNamara. Yet here it was McNamara's own flunky delivering the tickle, and he knew that the process of his being eased aside had already begun, even if he was just getting the message now. He knew that, because he wasn't getting it from McNamara or one of the chiefs, or vice chiefs even, like Davidson, but from this punk Ivy League whiz kid. For the first time Dillon saw the condescending Basset the way his fellow generals always had: the temple eunuch whose specialty was introducing others to his own state of emasculation.

"One further item, Mr. Basset, that you can pass on to the secretary for me." If Dillon had been a different man, a politician, say, he'd have found it possible to smile ingratiatingly here, cloaking his hostility while nursing it. But his face was wooden. Inside he felt raw. He stepped toward the door, then paused to say, "The four Chinese soldiers captured in Songbe..."

"Yes?"

"All four of them are dead, each one with a bullet to his head, executed before my people could interview them."

"Christ, who did that?"

"Tran Kim Don, the ARVN chief of staff in Phuoc Long. He did it himself."

"Jesus."

"Oh, and tell Mr. McNamara another thing. They were not Red Chinese."

"What?"

"Ethnic Chinese, from Cholon probably, but they were Vietnamese citizens. Most Chinese in Cholon are third or fourth generation. Khanh had them killed so we would not discover that they were mannequins."

"But you discovered it anyway?"

"The four were wearing People's Republic uniforms all right, but also ARVN-issue underwear and dog tags. It was a setup, a little sweetener from Khanh for the President's press conference, evidence that the Red Horde is coming."

"Jesus Christ, CIA had given him the report before you did, but as hard fact: four Chicom officers, serving as advisors to the VC, captured, debriefed, confirmed. The President was primed to use it in the Q-and-A if Red China's involvement came up."

Dillon nodded slowly. "That's what I love about this place. I had 'Dubious' stamped all over the DIA report. Dubious, Mr. Basset. Dubious."

He made it home in time for dinner. In twenty-four hours his impulse had reversed itself. He did not want now to talk to Cass about any of it. They sat in the dining room opposite each other, too far away to touch, not speaking except when Sergeant Mack came in to serve or clear. Then they both made the usual effort, the push for chat that social events in Washington often required.

— The Eastern Shore an hour closer, what with the new Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Crabs cost less on Maine Avenue now.

— Zinnias, the Officers' Wives' Club Garden Committee, the plantings at the chapel, brutal dry weather.

— Abe Fortas, who first refused the appointment to the Supreme Court, then accepted. No one refuses the President. Arthur Goldberg hated to resign from the Court for the UN.

—Maintenance should check the spot on the ceiling upstairs. The air conditioner is clanking.

Finally, when Mack came in with the coffee, Cass said, "Leave it here, Sergeant. I'll pour."

"Yes, ma'am."

And Dillon added, "You can go, Sergeant. Leave the rest."

"Thank you, sir." He collected the butter dish and the salt and pepper, then nodded at Cass. "Good night, ma'am."

"Thank you, Sergeant."

The door slapped repeatedly after him,
foop, foop,
on its swinging hinge.

At last Cass brought her eyes up and waited for Sean to look at her. "I watched the President's news conference yesterday."

Dillon stared mutely across the table, thinking how unlike her it was to introduce a subject that touched on his work.

Perhaps simply to deflect his mind from whatever it was his grave wife was going to say, he thought of Richard just then, of the time years before when he was expelled from the Benedictine prep school for some prank—that toilet bowl, wasn't it? How he and another boy had moved it under the chair of the statue of St. Anselm. The great Doctor of the Church taking a crap on the grassy circle in front of the school. Sean had had to leave the Pentagon in the middle of the day to meet the livid headmaster at the school on the far northeast side of Washington. The monk had actually begun by telling Dillon that his son would not be readmitted, and at first Sean thought surely Richard had done some heinous thing. But a toilet bowl under the grimacing saint! Richard was a boy who often failed to think things through. Sometimes Dillon thought their son had an undeveloped sense of the link between acts and consequences. But this time, despite himself, Sean Dillon had wanted to laugh, laugh out loud. A toilet bowl under a saint—it seemed more than a prank, a kind of parable, a lesson about human life, a good one. But the monk was adamant: this was a grievous violation, not just the desecration but theft, theft of the toilet. Sean couldn't believe what he was hearing. He knew already that the toilet was from a junkyard. Richard and his partner had paid a dollar for it. Every volt of the anger he'd felt toward his son all the way across Washington leapt now at the ridiculous priest. "Come, come, Father," he'd begun at one point, and within minutes he had cowed the headmaster, who relented. After the meeting, but still in
the headmaster's presence, Sean had, as the situation required, sternly admonished Richard for his impudence. But also he had winked.