Message From -Creasy 5 (3 page)

"The
point is that Creasy never bothered to explain this to me or the other guys.
He's different. He just lives inside himself."

She
folded that letter too, and slid it back into the envelope. Then she read the
final letter, which was full of enthusiasm. He had just completed an intense
final six weeks' course in mine laying and clearance. Together with his
qualifications from earlier courses, this meant he was now promoted 'specialist
first class'.

She
remembered their pride when they had received the letter; it was as though
their son had graduated with honours from Harvard University.

And
then, three weeks later, the letter from the Pentagon. Missing in action. The
weeks and months of waiting and praying and hoping to hear that he had been
taken prisoner. The twenty-six years of waiting to hear anything at all.

Her
husband stood up, gently took the box from her hand, and locked it away in the
bureau.

"Fucking
computers!"

Colonel
Elliot Friedman looked around the spacious office, and then said to the Dane:
"I've been working in this department for thirty years now. I remember
when the whizz-kids first came in with the computers. They told us all the
paperwork was going to be eliminated. Bullshit! We generate more paper now, in
spite of the fancy machines. Do you know why?"

Jens
Jensen shook his head. "I don't know why, but I guess it comes down to
bureaucracy. I used to work in the Missing Persons Department in the Danish
Police. Of course we had computers, and of course we had giant printers that
spewed out paper all day long. It reminds me of a story back in the last
century, when Bismarck discovered that the German bureaucracy had two great
warehouses full of documents that were completely useless. He gave an order to
burn all that useless paper. Two years later he remembered the order and asked
his chief of staff to check whether it had been carried out. The chief of staff
returned and reported that after two years only ten per cent of it was burned.
'Why?' asked Bismarck. The chief of staff replied: 'Because the bureaucrats
told me that it would take many more years to make copies of the documents
before they were burned.'"

For the
first time the Colonel smiled. It changed his tired, lined face. His was not a
job to envy. The building contained tens of thousands of files which held the
details of American servicemen missing in action, going all the way back to
World War I. Of course by now it was only those missing since the Korean War in
the early fifties, and through the Vietnam War, which caused the heartache of
so many thousands of relatives and loved ones. No other country in world
history had spent so much time and money trying to trace their missing
servicemen. It was emotive and it was political. And it was why in the modern
age American presidents were so reluctant to commit their servicemen to wars;
and why they so often used a hammer to crack a walnut.

Jens
knew all about that. He had been in Washington only one week, but had burrowed
like a beaver, and he now knew a great deal about the Missing-in-Action
department. He knew that the colonel was efficient and conscientious. He knew
that in spite of his rank he had never fired a gun in anger. He had a staff of
over three hundred which included experts at identifying human remains.

The
Dane passed across the dogtag, saying: "I know your people have seen this
before. As far as they know, it's authentic."

The
colonel studied the dogtag and nodded his grey-haired head.

"It
looks authentic," he said. "Vietnam era. What's your interest?"

"Concerns
a friend of mine. A very close friend. That dogtag belonged to a special forces
GI. He was with my friend when he went missing in action near the Cambodian
border back in nineteen sixty-eight."

The
colonel was still looking at the dogtag in the palm of his hand. He said:
"That was a bad year. Was Jake his given name or a nickname?"

"His
given name."

The
colonel was looking at his computer console. He shrugged, smiled wanly and said:
"Of course I could press the little buttons on this thing and the file
should come up on the screen. But like Bismarck's boys, I'm kinda
old-fashioned."

He
reached forward, pressed a button on his desk console and said: "Susanna,
I want the file on SFC Jake Bentsen missing in 'Nam...sixty-eight."

During
the ten minutes' wait for the file to arrive, the colonel poured three mugs of
coffee from a machine in the corner of his office; then, with a wink, he opened
the desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of Martell brandy.

"It
improves the taste," he said. "Believe me, army coffee needs all the
help it can get."

He
poured a generous slug into each mug, pushed one across the desk to the Dane
and passed another to The Owl, sitting silently to the side. "Skal!"

"Skal!"
said Jens. "Have you been in my country?"

"Yes,
back in the seventies I spent a lot of time in Sweden. We had quite a few guys
who deserted during the 'Nam war, and others who ducked the draft. Many of them
ended up in Canada and quite a few in Sweden, especially the black ones. There
were several cases where they pretended to go MIA and then found their way to
Sweden. My job then was to liaise with the Swedish government." He
shrugged. "I have to say that I found Stockholm and the Swedish pretty
boring. So on weekends I used to catch the ferry and take a little R and R in
Copenhagen. Danes have a better sense of humour, the booze was cheaper and the
girls were great."

Jens
asked, "Where did you hang out?"

"Kakadu...Is
it still going?"

"Yes,
it is. The girls are still there but these days the customers are mostly
Japanese."

There
was a tap on the door. A woman wearing a captain's uniform brought in a thick
file. She glanced at the Dane and then at The Owl before she quietly left the
room.

The
file had a red cover closed with black elastic. On the top right-hand corner
were stamped the letters MIA (EXL). The colonel pushed the file across the
desk, saying: "This is against regulations. But since I had some good
times in your city, you can look through it. I am not allowed to give you
copies of any parts except by written permission from the Secretary of
Defence."

The
Dane nodded his thanks, then tapped the letters on the file and asked:
"What do these signify?"

"It's
part of a grading we use. The letters EXL signify that it's low grade. We have
very little expectations either that your man is alive or that his remains will
ever be found." He looked again at the dogtag on his desk. "But
maybe, since this was hand-delivered to his parents' home, we should upgrade
the file."

Jens
had opened the file and was reading through the papers. They consisted of
dozens of reports, starting with the action report of the lieutenant in command
of the unit. It was followed by a report from the Divisional Combat
Intelligence Office and then reports concerning prisoner interrogations,
returned POW debriefings, Red Cross reports and finally analyses of information
given by the unified Vietnamese government after they began cooperating with
the US government in an effort to get sanctions lifted. Every single report was
totally negative.

It took
the Dane half an hour to speed-read it. Meanwhile, the colonel recharged the
mugs from the bottle of Martell until Jens realized he was drinking almost pure
Cognac.

He
closed the file and said, "I can understand why you gave it a low grading.
But still, the work that went into this file was very extensive. I congratulate
you."

The
colonel's face had turned sombre. He was looking at a framed photograph on his
desk. He said: "I lost my own son in Vietnam in sixty-seven. They shipped
his body back and he's buried in Arlington. Sometimes it's difficult to
understand what it means to a parent to know that his child is at rest, even if
it is below the earth. A lot of the officers working in this department, men
and women, are in similar situations. We take our work seriously. We see a lot
of prolonged grief. That grief is our motivation." He was now looking out
of the window, across the Potomac River. His tone was reflective. "As I
look back over the past few years, I notice the changes here in America. Up
until the sixties the family units were very strong, and of course our soldiers
went to fight in Europe and Korea knowing they had a mission. They understood
what they were risking their lives for. I guess 'Nam changed all that, and the
sixties changed the family ties too. But the parents of the ones who went
missing did not change. They still like to think that their loss had a meaning.
They still hope that the sacrifices were not in vain." He turned back to
the file. "The parents of Jake Bentsen must be in their seventies now.
Suddenly getting that dogtag after all those years must have been a combination
of hell and hope."

Abruptly,
he changed the subject. "This friend of yours. Was he regular army?"

The
Dane shook his head. "He was a Marine. But that was before he was a French
Foreign Legionnaire and a mercenary. He was in Vietnam in the latter
capacity."

The
colonel nodded thoughtfully and said, "Yeah, we had quite a few of those.
But I have to admit they weren't the kind of guys who would go on a wild-goose
chase twenty-six years later looking for a soldier who is almost certainly
dead. They must have been very good friends."

Jens Jensen
shook his head and stood up, saying, "They were not close friends,
Colonel. The truth is I don't really understand why my friend is going
back...Then again, he is not like the others, who just fought for money over
there."

He
picked up his briefcase and from his top pocket pulled out a card and placed it
on the desk. "A thousand thanks. If you ever find yourself in Copenhagen
again, please call me and we'll go and have a Schnapps together."

As he
reached the door the colonel's voice stopped him.

"If
your friend travels under a US passport, he might have trouble getting into
Vietnam. And if he does get in, he'll have more trouble if he starts asking
unofficial questions about US MIA's."

Jens
answered: "You might be right, Colonel. But then I'm just a detective.
When it comes to trouble, my friend has a history of taking care of himself.
Again, a thousand thanks! Or as you may have heard the expression on one of
your nights in Copenhagen and the Kakadu, 'Tusind tak'."

"It's a set-up. That's the only answer."

They were in a hotel room in downtown San Diego. Creasy was standing at the window
looking out on sheets of heavy rain. The Dane was sitting on the bed with the
open briefcase beside him and the computer on his lap. The Owl was sitting on a
chair in the corner.

"Set up for whom?" Creasy asked over his shoulder.

"For you, of course," Jens answered. "First the dogtag and the scrap of
paper with your name on it. Then you find out that it was delivered here to the
Bentsens' by a man you know but who you thought was dead."

Creasy turned and said: "Of course it's not certain that I know the man. All I
saw was a sketch of his face, added to the description that he limped on his left leg."

The Owl entered the conversation. "I don't believe in coincidence. Who is the man
you thought was dead?"

"It was a guy who worked for the South Vietnamese police. His name was Van Luk Wan.
He was a senior officer in the Intelligence Department, which meant that he
tortured a lot of people. One of them happened to be a friend of mine. She was
just a girl who worked in a bar in Saigon. Van had the idea, without any basis,
that she might be a VC informer. I don't think he cared one way or the other.
He was that kind of man. She died slowly and badly."

"So you killed him?" Jens asked.

"I thought I did. It was at night and the light was not great but he was only five
metres away. I don't usually miss at that range."

"You didn't double-check?" The Owl asked.

"There was no time. It was that kind of situation. One shot, and I was gone."

Jens
leaned forward and asked: "You heard nothing about it later?"

"No.
That night I flew out from Than Son Nut airport for Bangkok. I never returned
to Vietnam. By that time I was sick of it. Sick of the whole damned
charade!"

The
Dane was pecking away at his computer console. He glanced up and asked:
"This policeman, Van, did he know you well?"

"Yes,
very well. A week earlier he had picked me up for interrogation. There was no
rough stuff. They didn't do that to Americans: only to their own benighted
people."

The Owl
intervened again. "So why did he pick you up?"

Creasy
had turned back and looked down again at the rain as he said: "You have to
understand the time and the place. The war was at its apex. There were all
sorts of people running around Saigon. It seemed like every crook and conman
had made it their home. I worked for the American military as what they called
an 'irregular'. They had their Green Berets and their Rangers and other special
forces. But when there was a very high-risk job to be done, they hired guys
like me. In their jargon we were called 'expendables'. We had no mothers or
fathers to cry over the body bags when they were shipped home. Sometimes they
used us to beef up their regular forces. The money was good and so it attracted
all kinds of assholes. A sort of refuse that came out of the Congo and Biafra.
There were some good guys among them, even a couple of ex-legionnaires. But
most of them were the worst kind of dogs. And when they weren't out in the
field, they were into every racket you can think of, from drugs to
prostitution, gun-running to extortion. This guy, Van, was supposed to be in
charge of the Saigon police department which was set up to combat those
rackets." Creasy laughed without mirth. "But he, and most of his
team, were part of those rackets. The corruption in that city was incredible.
Of course he had to make a show to his superiors, so every once in a while he
would pull one of us 'irregulars' in for questioning."