"Another mystery to me."
Dillon looked over at his old friend. For how many years had they been sending each other the signals of their disdain for Pentagon martinets? "Westy? No mystery there, Michael. LBJ gives him his head for three reasons."
Packard unfurled a finger. "He's a southerner."
"Right."
Packard had to think for a moment, then got it. "After his stint at the War College, he went to Harvard, didn't he?"
"Harvard Business School, with Mac."
The two men grinned. Harvard had been a joke between them for years. Packard was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Michigan, but he'd gone as a night student to a downtown law school like Dillon.
"And the third thing that impressed Johnson?"
"Early success." Dillon's grin broadened. "He was the first man in his class to get a star. LB J loves Westmoreland because he was a general at thirty-eight."
Packard slapped Dillon's leg. "Thirty-eight, that's old." He burst out laughing. "You were thirty-seven!" He glanced backward to see if the others in the cabin were watching them.
Dillon began to laugh too, letting his tension go in this rare indulgence. Like the free-spirited young men they'd been together an entire era ago—long before they'd found themselves snarled in the thickets of the bureaucracy—they laughed.
The first thing to strike Dillon from the top step of the aluminum stairway was not the savage noontime heat—heat had been the feature of their last three stops—but the apparent chaos at Tan Son Nhut; not the chaos of battle, scrambling jet fighters, incoming mortar shells, GIs ducking for cover, but of construction and transport. Immediately to his airplane's left a pair of huge Chinook cargo helicopters were banging into the sky with dun-colored, car-sized crates dangling beneath them. To the right a line of four C-130s were off-loading a shipment of Jeeps and trucks with all the bustle of a seaport. Across a vast flat valley road graders were extending runways; bulldozers maneuvering around stacks of burning brush were pushing back the jungle; huge mechanized concrete spreaders were blanketing the dusty red soil. Elsewhere the broad apron was paved with aluminum matting. A dozen different types of aircraft taxied back and forth as the heat of their exhaust wrinkled the air. Dillon's nostrils burned. Buzzing amid the planes like gnats were tractors pulling carts laden with boxes. The tractors swerved and cut to avoid sentry-like pallets piled high with cartons and sacks, some construction supplies and some PX goods emblazoned with brand names—L & M, Coke, Maxwell House, and Miller High Life. Dillon knew that Tan Son Nhut was now the third-busiest airport in the world, but the commotion stunned him nonetheless. It was an unexpected measure of what the U.S. presence here had become, and would become yet.
He looked behind his airplane and saw, like a huge wall, a row of metal hangars and, more construction, the line of a dozen others half assembled. There were warehouses, office buildings, the control tower with outslanting green windows and, beyond those, the rooftops and water
towers of the air base proper which amounted to a sizable new town. Only the smoke from the burning brush at the jungle's edge beyond the new runways evoked the feel of violence, but it did so vaguely. Even in the oh-so-domesticated Pentagon Dillon had never been able to forget that he was a general officer who had never been at war. To some, he knew, that anomaly remained the most distinctive thing about him. As he stood gazing out across the war capital's airfield, the glimpse reminded him not of war but of Chicago's ever booming O'Hare.
He saw the army bird colonel waiting to greet him at the bottom of the stairs: a ruddy, jowly man built like a former linebacker. Dillon recognized him from his picture.
And quickly taking in the adjacent area, he saw another figure, a man in a seersucker suit and a Panama hat, and at once Dillon came even more alert. The man was standing twenty yards behind the colonel, near a pallet stacked with soft-drink cartons. The backwash from the Chinooks began to flap the fabric of his suit just then, and the man took his hat off. He was quite bald.
Dillon descended the stairs, donning his service hat; he took pains to avoid seeming to notice the man, but inwardly he cursed. CIA, he thought. Or Lodge, preempting him after all.
"You must be Flynn," he said to the army colonel.
As Dillon's foot hit the tarmac Flynn saluted. "Yes, sir. Joseph Flynn. Welcome to the zone, General Dillon."
Dillon returned the salute, then offered his hand. "Hello, Colonel. It's good to meet you at last." He smiled warmly. "I was happy when General Westmoreland gave me an Irishman as my man in Saigon."
"Thank you, sir." Flynn's handshake was firm, but he looked away too quickly, with a note of, Your man?
The figure in seersucker had taken several steps toward them, but now had stopped.
Dillon turned to introduce Packard, whose tie was firmly at his throat now, reddening his face. Dillon knew that it wouldn't be long before Packard unbuttoned his collar again.
As the other officers came down, Dillon introduced each of them to Flynn.
The man in seersucker began again to approach. He had donned his hat once more and his face was in shadow.
Under his breath Dillon asked Flynn, "Who is this?"
There was no subtlety in the DIA local commander as he turned to gape at the newcomer. "I don't know," he said, blushing to hear from his own mouth the one answer colonels knew generals could not tolerate.
The man in seersucker approached directly now.
Packard stepped forward, as if to intercept a court official delivering a subpoena, but Dillon took Packard's shoulder, drawing him back.
"General Dillon?" the man said, taking his hat off again. "Excuse the intrusion, sir." He glanced at Flynn, an apology for a turf violation that confirmed Dillon in his intuition that the man was CIA.
"I am Colonel Peter Freeman." He reached inside his suitcoat, drawing out a credentials folder and displaying it. "OSI, sir."
"OSI?" Flynn blurted out, as if he were in authority.
Freeman glanced at him, nodding. "Air Force OSI, Colonel."
Packard could not help himself. "Pete Freeman, don't I know you?"
Freeman grinned. "Mr. Packard, you presented me with a commendation in 1956."
"You were on the Hans Dieter case."
"Yes, I was."
Packard touched Dillon's sleeve. "That was Wiesbaden, the Luftwaffe mole. Pete Freeman helped break the Dieter case open, forcing the Bonn indictments."
Dillon said, "You worked with Bill Turner?"
"Yes, sir. We miss Bill."
Dillon extended his hand. "It's good to see you, Pete. I miss Bill too. What in hell are you doing here?"
Freeman glanced at the other officers standing awkwardly by. Colonel Flynn looked particularly glum.
As an army man Flynn had had no direct contact with the air force security agency, but he knew very well General Dillon was its founder, and he had heard how OSI officers still regarded Dillon as one of theirs. OSI men, with their civilian clothes and their exemptions from the requirements of rank, were more than ever misfits in the military, resented even outside the air force. They were also, unfortunately, damn good investigators.
"I'm the commander of the local district, sir," Freeman said.
"How'd you know we were coming?" Dillon asked.
"We try to maintain your standard, sir, of knowing what matters." Freeman grinned. "I just came out to add my word of greeting to Colonel
Flynn's." Again, Freeman offered the army man a deferential nod, but the wooden DIA commander did not respond. "And to say, General, that we would be honored, your schedule permitting, to have you inspect our facility at Bien Hoa. And to also say that OSI is at your service should there be—"
"Thank you, Pete," Dillon said with patent appreciation, but he cut him off too. It would not serve Dillon's purpose to show up the reticent and cautious Flynn. Dillon's in-field DIA people, men from all three services, were the ones whose devotion he needed now, and winning it had proved far more difficult than the air force agency's had ever been. Heartfelt as Freeman's gesture was, OSI was history for Dillon now.
Despite his civilian clothes Freeman took half a step back and saluted smartly. Dillon returned the salute. Dismissed, the OSI man turned and walked away.
Dillon nodded at Flynn and the group set off in the opposite direction, Flynn and Dillon side by side, leading the way across the tarmac. Dillon noted it when Colonel Flynn skipped subtly, tucking one foot briefly behind the other, to get into step with him.
"I expected to see body bags somewhere here," Dillon said as they walked. He had to engage this man, to smoke him out. It was an old act of cops' intuition to ask a frontal question that went right to the heart of things.
They were passing the C-130s. The noise of revving engines made it necessary to speak loudly, but also it isolated them.
"Body bags, sir?"
"Yes, Colonel."
"I doubt if they'd be that noticeable. We haven't been losing that many kids lately."
"We lost seven hundred in November and four-fifty in December."
"That was la Drang, though, General. Things have been going much better since la Drang."
Ia Drang was the valley in the Central Highlands where the half-rookie First Air Cavaliy had been decimated in a series of disastrous battles that had begun within a few weeks of their much-touted arrival. When the Air Cav had been so dramatically staggered, the President had responded by immediately sending over another fifty thousand troops, but still without mobilization. More rookies, in other words.
"But the remains are sent home from here, aren't they?"
"Yes, sir. But you don't see bags on the flight line now, not since those photos ran in
Life,
the dead arranged in squad formation, waiting to be loaded onto C-130s. The body bags are kept inside the hangars now, and loaded from there."
"Who ordered it done like that?"
"You could assume, General, that Camus Mac Vie did."
"Who?"
The quick look Flynn gave Dillon had a note of panic in it. A mistake? Showing up the general? Referring disrespectfully to another? "General Westmoreland, sir."
COMUS-MACV. Dillon had never heard the acronym pronounced. "What's the total now, KIA?"
"1,757 as of Monday."
"And the rate projection is—?"
"As of now, 500 per month."
"But we're doing better than that?"
"Yes, sir." Flynn hesitated, then added, "So we're told."
"What do you mean by that?"
"U.S. casualty figures are out of our purview, sir. That's all I meant."
Flynn was clearly grateful to be able to cut into Base Ops then, the low-slung white building beside the looming control tower. Colonel Flynn led Dillon's party through the crowd of pilots and navigators, cargo masters and transport officers. Those men were uniformly young, with very short haircuts, lean bodies, cracking agitation. They stared openly as the line of senior officers passed through.
Outside, drawn up at the curb were four unmarked Citroëns, each with civilian plates and each with a Vietnamese driver standing by its door. The drivers were dressed in slacks and Hawaiian shirts.
Dillon approached the driver of the lead car. "Do you speak English?"
"Yes, sir."
"What's your name?"
"Tran."
"Tran, I want you to stay here and supervise the transfer of our baggage. Will you do that for me?"
The driver glanced at Flynn, who did not react.
"You can pick your car up at our quarters." Dillon offered his hand and the driver took it. "Thanks, Tran." The driver smiled then, and hustled back into the operations building.
Dillon turned to Packard. "You drive, Mike. Follow the other cars." And to Flynn he said, "Colonel, you ride with me."
Dillon and Flynn got in the backseat as Packard sat behind the wheel. The other officers loaded into the automobiles behind.
Packard let the second Citroën go ahead of him, then fell in behind it. As the cars pulled away Dillon's eye wandered across the sights of the teeming air base, the barracks and hangars, maintenance buildings and huge warehouses.
"It's like a boomtown," Packard said from his place at the wheel.
"It's incredible," Flynn replied with nervous enthusiasm, "how fast we've done this." He pointed to a factory-sized building that reminded Dillon of the tempos on the Mall. "That's the new MACV headquarters. It will be done in May. Pentagon East, they call it."
Packard glanced in the mirror, catching Dillon's eye. Westmoreland was moving his headquarters onto this base because not even Saigon was secure.
"Speaking of headquarters, General," Flynn began, "I've already arranged—"
"No arrangements with headquarters will be necessary for now, Colonel. I want you to work with Mr. Packard in putting together a meeting with your personnel this afternoon."
"My personnel?"
"The DIA detachment of which you are commander."
"All of them?"
"Yes."
"But General, some of my men are in the field, and they won't—"
"I'm especially interested in hearing from them. Get everyone there."
"But I—"
"If there's a problem with this afternoon, we'll have the conference tonight. But I'd prefer it this afternoon. Mr. Packard will work with you. I want a full-court briefing on the current enemy battle order. I want to know current rates of North-South infiltration. I want your assessments. I don't need anyone outside DIA."
"General MacAuliff would—"
"Just my people, Colonel. My arrangement with General MacAuliff and MACV is something else. I don't want you to involve them at this point. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"I want DIA credentials displayed, no one else admitted. A secure conference room outside the MACV compound."
"Our offices are in the compound, General."
"I know that. I want this meeting held elsewhere."
"But, sir, without notice there's no place else I could—"
"Colonel, there are ten thousand Americans in Saigon. Are you telling me there is no secure conference room outside MACV headquarters?"