McGowan At War

By Sebastian L. Pandolfo

Set in 1969 in what was then the Republic of Vietnam, this novel deals with intelligence-gathering and some of those involved in the process, particularly Warrant Officer Francis McGowan, a US Army linguist. His assigned duty is to sit in an office translating intercepted enemy communications but he is drawn into the active hunt for a communist spy. An American counterespionage agent working on the same case begins to suspect that McGowan himself is a security risk.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Penguin Books
• Release date: Sep 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781952859267

Book preview

Chapter One

The old man sat straight up on a bench across from the restaurant. For ten minutes, he smoked and he watched. Everyone was hurrying, shoulders hunched against the chill. None of the passing Europeans lingered. The streetlights came on. He got up, took a last look around, and crossed the street.

Chinatown regulars filled the place. No one was speaking French. He made his way past the tables and through the kitchen. One of the cooks bowed his head in greeting, the rest ignored him. He went into a cramped storeroom and closed the door behind him. He sat on one of two chairs between overloaded shelves and faced a second door, which led out to an alley.

He checked his watch and relaxed, leaving on his wool cap and pea jacket. After twenty-three years in Paris, he still suffered from the weather. It was part of the price to be paid for getting his family out of Danang and away from the war without end.

True, chaos had spread all over France that year and there was talk of civil war, but that had nothing to do with him. His children were doing well, and they took care of their father. The pittance the Embassy threw his way could be spent on cigarettes and beer.

He was healthy enough and, even at his age, he bore the spirit of a soldier on a mission.

The back door opened, and cold air smacked his face. A man stepped in from the alley and eased the door shut. He wore a suit and tie and a dark overcoat. He bowed and said Brother Chu.

The old man stayed on his chair and bowed his head. Brother Kim. They had met several times, but neither of them knew the other’s real name.

No pleasantries were exchanged. The younger man remained standing. I will be in Paris for as long as the peace talks continue. You will come to this place at this same time on the tenth day from today, today being the first. Then the eighth day after that and then repeat the ten and eight schedule.

Perhaps I appear to be feeble-minded. He’s told me this twice before.

If you need to speak to me sooner, Kim said, "come here in the evening, make sure Huang sees you, then sit and eat a meal. The following morning, the tobacconist near your home will have instructions for you.

Now, what have you learned since we last spoke?

The Russians have someone in your organization reporting to Obolensky.

Kim drew a deep breath. What’s the name?

I haven’t heard a name. He operates somewhere in the South and deals with Americans as well as Vietnamese. He’s given them names of both Northern and NLF operatives, but, again, they haven’t spoken those names. I heard only that they’re getting them. The information must come in Russian or French. As I clean his office or the communications room, I’ve seen nothing written in Vietnamese.

Nothing in their trash bins?

They still burn all the paper themselves, in the courtyard, even Obolensky, if no one else is around. All that I remove are dust, food scraps and vodka bottles.

"Very well, keep your eyes and ears open. If not the traitor’s name, then any of the names he’s given them.

Also, Cao Ky of the puppet regime arrived here today. That may cause some talk among the Russians about the negotiations. Pay close attention.

I always do, Brother Kim.

The younger man bowed and went out into the night.

Our operative in the Soviet Embassy in Paris reported on 8 December that someone in the Service whose name he did not learn is spying for the Russians.

The two Foreign Ministry officials sat across from each other at a table in a windowless room in Hanoi.

The other man flicked a bit of lint off his sleeve. We expected this, he said. They give, they take. We must dance only on the end of their strings.

"Our man was one of the first Viet Minh. He emigrated in 1945 and was employed there for a long time as a janitor. We recruited him just this year when the talks began. He took pictures of some correspondence, but I haven’t been told that there is anything of value in them.

The last time he contacted his handler, this is what he produced. From an envelope on the table, he retrieved a sheet of thick yellow paper, one side of it smeared with graphite. It was torn from a pad in the cable room and had been under a page on which these two names were written. Yellow Cyrillic letters stood out against the graphite. They were presumably reported to Moscow Center.

He took another sheet from the envelope. "These are the two agents. Two separate cells at locations far apart. I will have to find out who could have known about both of them. It is unlikely they even know each other.

The traitor is in contact with Paris, where his control is. That makes sense. He would run a greater risk of being discovered if he appeared in Moscow, where we have so many people.

Perhaps someone in the Peace Delegation?

None of them have that kind of access. I had difficulty finding out where these two people are. The information is not in this building.

Perhaps the janitor can be induced to become more active.

That is not possible. The day after he turned this paper over to his handler, he was run over by an unidentified vehicle near the Embassy. It is probably more accurate to say his corpse was run over.

The other man leaned back in his chair. Then you will have to conduct your investigation here and in the South. It must be done quickly, but do not reveal more than the minimum necessary. Find out who the traitor is.

We will and then eliminate him as soon as possible.

"No. We must assume the Russians learned the janitor was spying for us. That fact alone may cause problems for our government and I will have to advise the Minister immediately. Think of the consequences if we were to liquidate an agent of the KGB.

Get the name. We’ll use some other means to neutralize him.

Chapter Two

You will not, I repeat, not, tell war stories. Not at the School, not off-post, not when you’re in-country, not when you leave the Army, not on your deathbed, never.

Two years later, Master Sergeant Beal’s welcome to the trainees still sounded dramatic. They had been impressed. The Sergeant was the keeper at the gate to the world where secrets were snatched from the air and codes were broken.

Sweat dripped off the systems operator’s nose onto his clipboard. His reverie ended.

Who would I tell this story to? Who would want to hear it?

He was perched on a stool in a small propeller airplane crammed with electronic gear. If he managed to pick out a Vietcong or North Vietnamese Army transmission through the crackling in his earphones and the roar of the engines, he would have the pilot begin tracking the location of the transmitter.

His back was to the pilot and co-pilot. All he could see were sheet metal, dials, and wires, but he knew they were flying low along the coast.

Duffy, the co-pilot said on the intercom, you don’t know what you’re missing. Playboy Bunnies, sunbathing, nude.

That was almost funny the first hundred times.

Bent over, sweltering and immobile, constantly turning knobs and flipping switches, he had been at this at least four hours a day for eight months.

If I wanted people to listen to my war stories, I’d have to pay them.

The plane turned inland from the South China Sea. They patrolled over dunes and salt flats, then paddies and stretches of grassland. Water buffalo grazing, said the co-pilot, just to hear himself.

The stench of rotting fish penetrated the fuselage. They were approaching Phan Thiet, where most of the country’s nuoc mam sauce was made.

Before he was even conscious of Morse code in the static, the operator’s finger hit the switch on a recorder. A wireless operator whose rhythm he did not recognize was transmitting somewhere close. He alerted the pilot. The plane banked and they flew in a zigzag pattern, trying to find a compass bearing along which the signal faded. The transmitter would be somewhere on that line on their maps. By repeating the process at different headings, they would, ideally, be able to draw four lines that intersected at the spot where the enemy radio was.

This time, however, the plane jerked into a steep climb. The operator dropped the clipboard and braced himself against one of the stationary radios facing him.

The pilot shouted, I thought this was a quiet area.

It is, the co-pilot said. What happened?

Muzzle flashes, in the tree line to the left. Didn’t you see them?

No, I was marking the map.

Well, up, up and away. We’re not sticking around here waiting for happy hour.

Everyone in the Section knew the pilot had only a few days left on his tour of duty.

When you’re short like that, lots of things could look like muzzle flashes.

It’s not a total loss, the operator said. I taped a good chunk of the message. Maybe they can get something out of it at Battalion.

Chapter Three

Warrant Officer McGowan walked out of the HQ on his way to the mess hall. He realized he had forgotten his book. He turned back. Unless he had a book open in front of him while he ate, someone might sit and talk to him.

He reached the hut. One of the four young officers inside stood with his back to the screen door. The man had thrust his right hip sideways and was holding his forearms straight out, hands dangling from the wrists. One of the others snickered, then glanced toward the door. He shut up and lowered his head. The one doing the pantomime shook his hands vigorously, as though they were asleep.

McGowan had convinced himself he was inured to this group. They were not career soldiers. They had signed up only to avoid being drafted and serving in conditions not quite as pleasant as those at Radio Research. They were insignificant adolescents. Nonetheless, he had to wait for his face to stop burning before he went in. He looked straight ahead as he walked to his desk.

Colonel Abbott’s office door opened. The colonel stuck his head out. Ah, Mister McGowan, he said, glad you’re still here. Can you come in, please?

McGowan followed the CO into the office. Abbott closed the door and pointed to a gray metal table at which his Executive Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Wyman, stood looking down through thick, Army-issue eyeglasses at a sheet of paper.

Wyman turned to the warrant officer and said, Morse intercept. No fix and no call sign but they recorded this much. It seems to be mostly in clear with some routine operational code mixed in. I only see a couple of words I’m familiar with, so I don’t think it is a routine message.

With his hands clasped behind him, McGowan bent over to study the paper. The text was six lines of plain Vietnamese interspersed with clusters of letters and numerals. He pointed to the first of these code groups.

A rank?

Major, Wyman said.

This next group looks like a location.

A district here in II Corps. The warrant officer did not need to know which district.

And the three groups there?

A city in North Vietnam.

McGowan straightened up. It says the major in command of that district’s Reconnaissance Unit detachment has a brother who was crippled in a car accident years ago and who is still living in that city in the North.

Wyman looked past McGowan at Colonel Abbott. Why the devil does someone go out and take the risk of being located for a message like that? Tactically, it’s useless.

Abbott had been stuffing tobacco into his pipe. He shrugged. Our operator is experienced. He didn’t recognize the fist at all, so maybe it’s a new guy out there.

He turned to McGowan. Information of this nature, their spies usually write down and send by courier. It winds up at Cu Chi. If they deem it important, they’ll send it North from there.

The colonel struck a match and lit the pipe. Reconnaissance Unit. Damn it. You know what that means.

McGowan recognized the official name for a component of the Phoenix Program. Euphemisms, along with acronyms and obscenities, were a major part of the American language as it was spoken in Vietnam.

We send this item back to the World, Abbott said, and they’ll tell us to be good little soldiers and pass it on to CORDS.

The organization known as Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support ran Phoenix. The CIA ran CORDS.

It was easy for McGowan and Wyman to guess what the colonel would say next.

He blew out a big cloud of smoke. Damn CIA. They’ll report to Command that they had it first from one of their spooks. No one can prove otherwise.

I don’t know, Colonel, Wyman said. I’ve met with the head honcho at the local CORDS shop. He seems like a straight shooter.

Thomson, said Colonel Abbott. At least that’s what he calls himself. Your old friend, Mister McGowan.

I wouldn’t say he’s a friend, Sir. We only worked together those few days over at Corps.

Well, you saw what he wrote for your personnel jacket. Apparently, you perform miracles. He turned to the Executive Officer. Did I ever show you that letter, Colonel?

No, Sir.

Abbott went to the chair behind his desk and sat. He gestured toward the other two seats in the office. It must have been before you got here. Thomson suspected there was information leaking to the enemy out of ARVN II Corps General Staff. His people got the lead from turncoats and prisoners, but they couldn’t identify the source. He drew on his pipe. "This was eating at him for quite a while, it seems. You can imagine how something like that can impede co-ordination with our allies.

Then one of his Phoenix teams takes a diary off a dead VC. There was a lot of writing in the book, but it was soaked in blood, barely legible. Obviously, Thomson couldn’t trust any locals with it, so, who’s the best linguist the US of A has in-country? He swept his arm toward the warrant officer.

To make a long story short, Francis here dug up enough nuggets from the diary, which, when Thomson put them together with stuff he already had, gave him the culprit. Only one officer on the Staff could have been the leaker. Turns out he was a relative—and something of a hero—of the guy who kept the diary.

McGowan stared straight ahead. In the long story, he had painstakingly separated the pages, constantly touching the dried blood. The dead man had composed some beautiful verse about the slog on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, about his aspirations, about his children.

I’m not surprised, Mister McGowan, said Wyman. Well done.

Thank you, Sir.

Abbott knocked embers from his pipe into an ashtray, tilted back his chair, and put his feet up on the desk.

You realize, Francis, notwithstanding the letter, neither the CIA nor Military Intelligence nor Counterintelligence, for that matter, mentioned you or this station in any of their reports. Doing so would only have called attention to their own inadequacy when it comes to the Vietnamese language. If they’re that ill-prepared, one has to wonder how competent they are in other areas.

Mister Thomson and his associates put together a great deal of background, Sir. He provided the context I needed to make the translation useful.

Abbott smiled. You can afford to be humble, but I have an obligation to think about a time when we’ll be in a fight with everybody over diminishing resources. The way this war is being conducted, that could be any day now. He looked at Wyman. Isn’t that right, Colonel? Despite the differences in rank, the three of them had talked like this many times over the years at various stations.

Yes, Sir, the Executive Officer replied. I’m sure Mister McGowan recalls the struggle to get re-established after we were kicked out of France.

"I do, Sir. Not just getting new quarters but getting people to fill all the slots.

I must say, though, that’s a problem we don’t seem to have here.

What we have here, said Colonel Abbott, "is a surplus of lieutenants. We’re lousy with them. Can’t send them all out to the field and still they keep flying them in. What we do need are more decent linguists. Hell, you saw it for yourself, everyone needs decent linguists."

Wyman looked at his watch. If it’s okay with you, Colonel?

Sure, sorry I held you up. Just grousing. You’ll get the intercept to Arlington? Thanks.

Mister McGowan, can you stay for a minute?

Wyman left.

How are you getting along here? Abbott said.

Fine, Sir.

"I know you were a lot