Page 158 of Cry Havoc

Serrano reached into his leather satchel and slid a photograph across the table.

Tom set his beer down, his eyes searing into a face he knew.

“That fucking weasel. Eldridge. Son of a bitch. I knew I didn’t like that guy. Does State know?” Tom asked.

“Not yet.”

“Why?”

“There’s more.”

“Let me see if I have this straight so far. Eldridge is a State Department liaison to MACV, specifically to SOG, and he passes intel to this woman, what was her name?”

“Lan Tri Phuong.”

“Yeah, so she’s the cutout passing information to this doctor, who radios it to Hanoi?”

“We think Hanoi, but possibly Moscow.”

“Moscow? You think because it’s a Soviet radio he’s communicating with Moscow?”

“We don’t know.”

“And on the night of the POW mission, what happened?”

“As much as you guys tried to hide it, a request for air support was routed through Saigon, through MACV-SOG headquarters. We checked the logs. Eldridge was there. We were not following him at the time, so we don’t know what happened between that air request and the burst transmission from the clinic. We do know that two hours after that air request, the burst transmission goes out.”

“And we hit an empty camp.”

“That’s right.”

“But ST Idaho disappeared before the POW mission. Did you pick up a transmission out of Saigon then?”

“No. Your POW mission was time sensitive, so the doctor took a chance and used his radio to alert Hanoi. Hanoi then made sure that camp was a ghost town by the time you got there. We now know Brémaud communicates with someone else using a dead drop. The radio, even with its burst transmission, is too dangerous to use, so it is saved for emergency circumstances.”

“Like the POW mission.”

“Precisely. We assess that the dead drop is the preferred method of communication, which is how they compromised ST Idaho.”

“Fucking bastards.”

“I read your report; you saw a Russian in that camp. The man who killed Quinn.”

Tom nodded.

“And you saw three other Americans.”

“Yes.”

“Tom, I’m going to share something with you that no one else in Vietnam knows, not Backhaus, not Singlaub, not Abrams.”

“What?”

“I can’t divulge where it came from, because truthfully, I am not cleared to know. I can make assumptions and so can you, but it’s the information that matters. Even though it is unconfirmed, we have information that the Soviets are moving U.S. POWs to Siberia.”

“Motherfuckers. And you think the disappearing SOG Teams are part of that?”

“I do, but others as well, pilots certainly.”