Once an Eagle (130 page)

The Undersecretary had taken the earpiece out of the corner of his mouth. He turned to Farnham and said: “What's your opinion, Bliss?”

The Admiral examined his nails. Unlike Massengale he had aged substantially since '44, but the change was flattering: his lean, tanned face still looked aristocratic and capable. “I would be inclined to concur, sir. The Fleet is in an excellent state of readiness. Strikes could be coordinated with maximum effectiveness from both the carriers and the Cochin fields. The entire coast from Macao to Tunghsing would be extremely vulnerable to air and naval bombardment.”

The Undersecretary nodded and looked at Brokaw. “Fred, what is your feeling about the extent and intensity of Chinese Communist reaction?”

The CIA man, who had a grave, scholarly look and the shoulders of a fullback, answered easily, “All reports indicate there is considerable unrest in both Kwangsi and Kwangtung provinces, with the consequent breakdown in various civil and constabulary functions. I'd say a military operation of this type would stand an excellent chance of success.”

Again there was a brief pause. The Undersecretary fiddled with his glasses, staring sadly at the papers in front of him. He had obviously come out here prepared to do something momentous and firm; but this appeared to be a bit more than he had bargained for. “This is a very serious undertaking you've outlined, Courtney,” he said carefully. “One fraught with a high ratio of risk.”

“Sir, it has been my experience that nothing worthwhile is ever accomplished without taking a few risks along the way.”

“If I may be forgiven for interjecting a note of urgency into the discussion,” Beemis offered in his flat, unruffled voice, “Competrin and Tonkalloy will most certainly go under unless some positive and aggressive steps are taken to control the campaign of destruction and terror carried on by the Hai Minh. It's obvious that the government forces are totally inadequate to cope with them. A plan such as General Massengale has outlined would afford us the very means for rolling back Communist subversion. If we are to do anything in behalf of our overseas interests here, we must do it now or not at all.”

Damon kept watching the faces. Incredulity had him like a fist. So neat. It was all so neat. Those Kuomintang divisions—if divisions you could call them—up at Pao Xieng; the official Khotiane protest, and Hoanh-Trac's declaration of intention; Chiang Kai-shek's ultimatum—a face-saving gesture pure and simple, any fool could see that (how on earth could the Peanut, sitting on his island citadel twelve hundred miles away, insist on a demilitarized zone of ten kilometers width between the tatterdemalion remnants of his army and Hoanh-Trac's forces, as a
final
condition? It was patently absurd); Massengale's flying trips to Taipei to confer with the G-mo; the Ninth Fleet off Trucphong; Brokaw's twilight operations over the border in China and Thailand; Competrin's massive rubber and mining interests in jeopardy. Interests—they were compulsions. Trade follows the flag, he had read somewhere long ago; now it seemed to be the other way around—the flag was expected to come fluttering in and wrap itself around the massive interests. Or maybe it always had …

There was more discussion of Competrin's predicament, and a lengthy exchange between Massengale and Farnham over the alternative possibility of the seizure of the island of Hainan as a buildup area for a subsequent assault on the China coast. Massengale disagreed vehemently: Hainan was largely rice paddy or mountainous country, there were no adequate facilities for training and supply areas; they would merely be repeating the Taiwan predicament all over again. Bliss replied coolly that the Japanese had found Yülin and the south coast adequate enough for their purposes in the forties. Massengale said that in any event they would only have alerted the Chinese to the threat of invasion, without effecting the desired objective, which was to reestablish the Generalissimo on the Chinese mainland. With raging admiration Damon watched him at the map, discussing distances, logistics problems, terrain. Brilliant: they would still say he was brilliant, inventive, tireless. No topographical wrinkle had not been examined, no eventuality had not been explored. Nothing ever changes, he thought bitterly. He had been caught in a malevolent time bubble of steel—the clean, stately, cool room, the long table, Massengale at the map (though without the ivory-tipped pointer), everybody else obediently nodding. Though note the undeniable advantages of increased rank, he told himself. Then we only kept the wars going; now we can plan out how to start them …

All the threads, all the ingredients. So pat. The show was in the works, the skids were greased, everything was set to roll for a fine, spanking war against the dirty Chinese Reds. And here he sat—the only one of this august company who had crawled through the boondocks to talk to Hoanh-Trac, who had prowled around the wretched camps at Pao Xieng, nodding earnestly to the bland offerings of the Chinese interpreter while he listened to the squad and company commanders talking among themselves; the only one for that matter who had ever talked and hiked and fought with these same dirty Chinese Reds—here he sat, far down at the end of the table, with Porky Bannerman and Toddles Carrick, the jet carrier wizard, and the man named Frazier, and two of the Undersecretary's staff.

“Emphatically, sir,” Massengale was saying to the Undersecretary. “The Generalissimo gave me the most solemn personal guarantee that he was ready to throw all his resources into this operation. He is convinced that the timing is right, and that it cannot fail.”

The Undersecretary nodded and chewed at his glasses frame. His face still bore the impassive, intent expression, but Damon could tell: he was being won over. It all sounded so right, so necessary, so inevitable—

“General Bannerman, what is your opinion?”

“Most emphatically affirmative, sir!” Porky had held his body weight down pretty well, but his face betrayed him. There had been so many extracurricular attractions at Kyoto and Bad Godesburg and Paris and Ankara and Seoul: and now here in Cau Luong. “All of that patishery!” Raebyrne had used to say, watching the little midinettes hurrying home, their dark eyes flashing. “Just feast your eyes on 'em, Skipper …” Porky had found the patisserie—both culinary and feminine—irresistible during the lush years of occupation duty and overseas missions. It was said he kept two Khotianese beauties—each in a separate apartment—here in Cau Luong, and that his stag parties were awesome things, even among the Mobile Forces revels. Now he stared eagerly down the table at the Undersecretary, blinking with thought. His face had swollen hugely, almost as though the bone itself had thickened, and then deepened to a choleric red stitched with fine purple veins, so that now he looked not so much like a petulant baby as a rather bright, handsome little pig—one of Ulysses' argonauts, perhaps, caught in midtransmogrification in Circe's palace, just tapped by the malignant wand. But he knew what he wanted—or what was expected of him. “It's a perfect multiple solution, sir,” he declared in his thin, hoarse voice. “This would settle once and for all the problem of Communist infiltration from China: we could seal off all points of ingress to the entire Indochinese complex, without fear or favor. If you want my opinion it's time we started carrying the fire to these people, instead of falling back into a defeatist pattern, waiting for them to hit us before we move …”

There was a rustle of amusement around the table. The Undersecretary smiled, which made his face look suddenly boyish and winsome. “I can share your impatience, General.”

Porky licked his lips; two tiny beads of sweat glistened at the corners of his nose. “I didn't mean to sound so frantic,” he added. “But it gets to you, taking losses the way we have. My boys have been carrying the load, and with damned little support, too. It seems to me we've got to begin to get somewhere in this hassle.”

“I couldn't agree with you more.” The cool gray eyes came to rest on Damon. “How about you, General?”

It was a curious moment. The Undersecretary had spoken, but it was Massengale's gaze he felt constrained to meet. All these years; and always his junior in grade, leading from weakness, not strength. Always the outlaw, the heretic voice. The bad soldier … Only this time he wasn't lying smashed to pieces on a cot, and there were no Salamanders he felt himself personally responsible for.

He drew a breath and said: “Sir, I am solidly opposed.”

The Undersecretary blinked as though he'd just been awakened in the middle of the night. “You are? To what?”

“To the entire idea.”

“Oh balls, Sam,” Porky exclaimed with an air of humorous exasperation; but the others were silent.

“Your reasons, General?”

Damon leaned forward. Here goes nothing, as Joey would say. In with both feet. “First of all: at the operational level, General Ch'en's forces are utterly unreliable.”

There was a low murmur at this. Massengale laughed lightly and said: “Whatever you've got, the Night Clerk's against it!… Samuel, on precisely what do you base that conclusion?”

“Five days at Pao Xieng, General.”

They were all looking at him in surprise. The Undersecretary said, “You were there? You inspected the army?”

“I observed this force right down to company and squad level. On several occasions I got away from the staff watchdogs and talked with both officers and men. They are completely demoralized, and they are demoralizing and enraging the Khotianese among whom they are living. They are subsisting mainly by brigandage and the opium trade: there are ample evidences of both. The field-grade officers are every bit as corrupt as they were during the war against Japan. Discipline is almost nonexistent, there are no training schedules, their weapons and equipment—
our
weapons and equipment, I should say”—he shot Brokaw a swift, sharp glance—“are in fearful condition. General Ch'en's ‘army' has no value as an effective fighting force.”

There was a short, embarrassed silence. Porky was apoplectic; Beemis was watching him with irritation and distaste, Massengale's expression was the old one he remembered—a steady, baleful speculation; Farnham was inspecting his cuticles; Brokaw's face was impervious, but his ice blue eyes held the faintest trace of contemptuous amusement; the Undersecretary was tugging at his glasses, his mouth open in disbelief. All right, then: the hell with all of them. They'd get reality if they choked on it.

“That is your considered professional opinion, Damon?”

“It is, sir. Far from being of top-caliber assault quality, these soldiers—I am using the word rashly—would crumble like chalk at the first organized resistance, and blow away. Also, I have talked at good length with General Hoanh-Trac at Plei Hoa, and two other of the northern commanders. I can say without hesitation that not only would they refuse to support a venture such as that outlined here today, they would be unalterably opposed to any operation in conjunction with or in support of these lawless divisions. They merely want them out of their country, in the same way that we would seek the removal of some renegade Mexican force bivouacked in the Gila Bend.”

“The Generalissimo will never acquiesce to such an eventuality,” Massengale said sharply.

Little old Peanut will acquiesce to what the United Nations directs, Damon thought; or to what Hoanh-Trac sets in motion. But he made no reply.

Brokaw smiled his thin, secret smile. “Do you mean to say that they are
opposed
to the Chinese Communists, Damon?”

“Yes. They are. But they will not support the idea of serving as the front line in a war of aggression.”

“But if it should simply come about? They would have no choice.”

“Don't worry,” Beemis broke in, “they'd fall in line. They know which side their bread is buttered on.”

“They're not eating bread in Plei Hoa, Mr. Beemis,” Damon answered. “They're eating rice.” He said to Brokaw: “Everyone always has a choice. It may be very narrow but there is still a choice. And I maintain they will not support any such scheme—in fact they are quite likely to take military action against it.” He turned to the Undersecretary again. “And thirdly, I know a little about the Chinese partisan and guerrilla warfare. I traveled with several columns in Shansi and Hopei Provinces in the late 1930s, and I learned a good deal about their tactics and their morale.” He put his hands flat on the polished wood. “I can tell you this: they will no more engage in the conventional forms of warfare—as we are pleased to wage it—than the Khotianese insurgents have; they will not be cast down by the most grievous losses in territory, matériel or human life; and they will never, never give up.” He swept his eyes around the table. “Are we seriously contemplating this kind of war—a vast, interminable ground war—on the Asiatic mainland?”

Massengale said sharply, “Look here, Samuel, you came out here a scant two months ago on an impromptu junket—”

“I came out here to Asia twenty-four years ago, and I didn't sit around sipping Scotch-and-sodas in Shanghai or the Legation, either. I learned about the people's war at first hand. And I've spent nearly six weeks this time in the field, talking to the Khotianese on all levels. Listening to them, too. Have you gentlemen?”

“For pete's sake, Damon,” Beemis broke in, “—whose side are you on, anyway?”

“I'm on the side of reality, and against the side of horse shit and wishful thinking.”

“Reality—the reality of it is they're the
enemy,
those people up there. They're completely opposed to our way of life—our efforts to modernize their country, industrialize it, raise their standard of living. Are you in any doubt about that? Damned if I know what your persuasions are, but I guess it's true what they say about you …”

“What do they say about me, Mr. Beemis?” Damon said in a quiet voice.