Page 97 of Cry Havoc

“Fortitude,” Gaston said.

“That’s right. But, to answer your question, it’s not just the will of the soldier, it’s the commitment of the citizenry and our elected representatives, but most importantly our president. I don’t see all those entities having a long-term determination to win when the guerrilla tactics of our adversaries continue to erode that political resolve.”

“With Tet, Westmoreland, McNamara, and Johnson have lost whatever credibility they had,” Gaston added. “That might be the most severe wound of Tet. I believe that President Johnson has been focused on legacy.”

“What legacy?” Tom asked.

“He wanted to be remembered as the greatest domestic president in a generation. Instead, he got Vietnam.”

“?‘These are the times that try men’s souls,’?” Serrano said, quoting from Thomas Paine.

“There is something else,” Gaston said. “You want to show the world that what your President Kennedy termed ‘so-called wars of liberation’ will not work. If you want to win, you go to Hanoi, but your president seems to be afraid of triggering some as yet undisclosed agreement between the North and Moscow or Beijing, which would result in the deployment of Soviet or Chinese troops to Vietnam turning the whole fiasco into World War Three. Now, Mr. Serrano may know more, and some such treaty might indeed have been signed, but I have not heard whisperings of it, and I doubt it exists. As long as you operate in fear of this nonexistent treaty, you will continue to lose.”

“To win, North Vietnam merely needs to survive,” Serrano said.

“Quite perceptive. Your leaders think that Ho and Giap will behave as did the North Koreans. They will not. Their tolerance for death is exceedingly high. If your strategy is to try and make it so costly in terms of dead and wounded for the North that Ho will be forced to the negotiating table, we are in for a long war. Though it may not look that way, the North is fighting what you call a total war, while you are fighting a limited one. The longer this war goes on, the better for the North. Your secretary of war…”

“Of defense,” Serrano corrected.

“Forgive me. That’s right, and it is another reason you will lose.”

“What’s that?”

“You need a secretary of war, not defense.”

“On that we agree.”

“It is well documented that McNamara and his Whiz Kids look at war in quantifiable terms. If they spoke French, they would be familiar with élan—spirit, energy, animation, vigor. Élan is not a quantifiable term, yet that is what the North has in spades and is counting on to outlast the Americans. It is a nationalistic spirit, an anti-colonial spirit. You are overextended in Vietnam, Mr. Serrano. Remember what Ho said of the French in the fifties: ‘You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.’ Your search-and-destroy operations are not going to win this war, just prolong it. If the communists win, I will work with the communists. If the South, and by South I mean the Americans, win, then I will work with the Americans.”

“Very pragmatic.”

“I am a businessman.”

“So, you are going to sit on the fence?”

“Such an American term, but yes. You could say I am ‘playing both sides against the middle.’ I have a business to run, Mr. Serrano.”

“I understand.”

“Do you know what they call the war in the North?Dau Tranh Vu Trang,‘the violence struggle,’strugglebeing the key word. It comes down to how many Americans you are willing to sacrifice before you lose Vietnam. And on that note, gentlemen, andma chérie,I will bid you goodnight. Lê and Tru?ng will show you to your chambers. Rest well.”

As Tom lay on the bed beneath the mosquito netting, smoking a cigarette, in the eerily silent room, he kept going back to something Gaston DuBois said over dinner.

How many Americans are you willing to sacrifice?

Looking at the ceiling through the white netting, his thoughts of dead Americans and Vietnamese, soldiers and civilians, were intruded upon by a vision, a vision of Ella, her face half bathed in an orange glow.

CHAPTER 31

National Security Agency

Fort Meade, Maryland

USA

AS AN INFORMATION PROCESSINGspecialist, he should have been paying more attention to their guest speaker in the National Security Agency’s lecture hall, especially as the topic concerned what Allister Desmond would presumably be working on for at least the next decade.

The NSA had assigned him to a new project, but everything was kept compartmentalized, so none of the individual programmers knew its full scope. For Desmond, that meant writing code that could be encrypted and transmitted electronically rather than over radio waves. That also gave him access to keying material.