Page 81 of Cry Havoc

“Clear on the left,” the second man said.

“Clear here,” the third man said. She recognized him as Nick Serrano. She and her father had attended numerous meetings with him over the past year. What was he doing here with a gun? Wasn’t he a U.S. import control officer?

She looked back to the man closest to her. It was only then that she remembered him as the man she had met with Serrano at the government building that morning.

Dark blond hair, stubble, her age, maybe a little older. Strong. She especially remembered his deep blue eyes.

He approached and knelt next to her.

“My name’s Tom. We met yesterday afternoon. You’re going to be okay.”

CHAPTER 26

GRU Headquarters

Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

February 5, 1968

MIKHAIL LAVRINENKO SAT AThis desk in GRU headquarters, his bulky frame hunched over the latest updates and casualty reports from Hanoi. He had not touched his caviar.

“Have you read these?” he asked his deputy.

“Yes, Director.”

Anatoly Penkovsky had not left the building in five days. He had no one and nothing to go home to. His office had a couch and there was a locker room with showers on the ground floor. If he was going to take over as director, he needed to be ready. Tet had been a test for them all. He had poured over reports all night while his boss slept.

“This is a disaster,” Lavrinenko said.

The GRU had been a principal architect of the Tet Offensive. Its failure could have severe consequences for the man who sat at its helm.

“Perhaps not.”

Penkovsky sat to the director’s right in the leather overstuffed chair. A stack of files and periodicals was on a small table next to him.

“Tell me.”

“It is true the North has suffered a catastrophic military defeat, but they can still, in a way, achieve their objective.”

“How? Is it confirmed that eighty thousand Viet Cong and NVA were involved in the attacks?”

“Yes, Director.”

“And we had the element of surprise? Half of the ARVN was on leave for Tet, correct?”

“That is what we understand. As we know from our source in Saigon, Colonel Phúc Trân was killed before the attacks, so he was never interrogated in Saigon. It also appears that the United States military and its political leadership favored intelligence reports that painted an overly optimistic picture of their progress in Vietnam. CIA warnings of an imminent attack went ignored.”

“Why?”

“We do not know for certain, but we surmise there is an unwillingness on behalf of the current American administration to accept reports unfavorable to the official narrative.”

“I see.”

“There was a problem with the timing, but I assess it did not play an overriding role in the NVA defeat.”

“What was it?”

“Back in August, Hanoi shifted from their customary China Standard Time to Indochina Time. There is an hour difference between the two time zones. Saigon and the South remained on China Standard Time. That meant some units were on China Standard Time and others were on Indochina Time.”