"Archangel continued his winning ways—if you can call them that—in Laos. He learned the language. He was very effective, not only as a combat fighter but also as a technician and planner. The people of the Hmong became fiercely, even obsessively, loyal to him, and he to them. In fact, he became so effective that the Pathet Lao put what amounted to a five-thousand-dollar bounty on Archangel's head—a small fortune to any Hmong, not to mention just about any native of Southeast Asia. It was never collected by anyone, although hundreds of people had opportunities. Now, that's how legends grow about madmen.
"In the meantime, Archangel was having a grand and glorious time. In fact, freed of virtually all constraints imposed by military discipline, free to do nothing but go around killing the enemy, he was—if you'll pardon the crudeness—happy as a pig in shit. And, of course, during the time all this was taking place, it was clear to everyone except a few generals and politicians that we were losing the war.
"Now, enter the villain of the piece: Archangel's CIA controller. As the story goes, this man could—if one wanted to be excessively charitable—be called a sadistic son of a bitch. He was a controller in every sense of the word; he not only wanted to control his operatives' actions, but he also wanted their souls. He enjoyed gutting people. He and Archangel didn't get on well.
"Back in the United States, a few generals and politicians had decided that all that was needed to boost public morale and rally support for the war was a bona fide hero—someone like Sergeant York in World War I, or Audie Murphy in World War II. This person's war record would be made public, a tremendous media blitz would be unleashed, and our hero would spend the rest of the war running back and forth across the country making public appearances, talking up the war effort, that sort of thing. Archangel was the man chosen to play this public-relations hero. Understand—he wasn't chosen because he was the best candidate. True, he had the best war record— if one reduces that to counting medals, which is what was done. Also, he was deemed photogenic. But he was indeed crazy and, for the most part, uncontrollable. Archangel was chosen because his controller had done a truly heroic job of lobbying. The controller did this because his own career would be enhanced if one of his men did the job, of course, but the most important reason for the lobbying effort was the controller's knowledge that Archangel would truly detest the part. Archangel belonged in the jungle, not on television, and the thought of putting Archangel on television and the lecture circuit pleased the controller immensely.
"Archangel wasn't in a position to refuse, so he had to accept the assignment. The controller brought in a South Vietnamese colonel to replace Archangel with the Hmong—a very strange choice, Archangel thought at the time—and Archangel was sent off to Hawaii for six weeks of rest, recreation, and intensive drilling on how to become a comic-book hero. In the United States everything was being geared up for our hero's entrance onstage. It was insane, by the way, because Archangel would have lasted about a week on this trip before he broke some talk-show host's neck. But that's neither here nor there."
"He was never put in place, was he?" Reyna asked, her voice breaking slightly. In the pale light cast by the street lamp her face looked as ashen as it had when Veil had first seen her.
"Obviously not," he replied dryly. "If he had been put in place, your friend wouldn't have anything to dig for, would he?"
"What happened, Veil?"
"The story goes that Archangel—who never slept well— was walking the streets of Saigon a few hours before his early-morning flight back to the United States was scheduled to take off. He was approached by a pimp who offered him a young boy and girl for his sexual pleasure. Archangel knew the children; they were from the Hmong tribe he'd fought with."
Reyna uttered a tiny gasp, but Veil spoke through it. "When that plane landed in Washington, the entire Washington press corps, the Joint Chiefs, dozens of politicians, and no less than the president of the United States were waiting to greet Archangel. The problem was that Archangel had never boarded the plane. At the time the plane had taken off, he was in a small office in the basement of the United States Embassy in Saigon breaking the bones of his controller.
"You see, it seems that, two months before, the controller had been approached by the South Vietnamese with a problem they wanted the controller to help them solve. There was this South Vietnamese colonel who'd just about cornered the Saigon markets in drug dealing, racketeering, and pornography. He'd become a considerable embarrassment to the government, but he was from an important family; they couldn't just put him in prison. The controller was asked to find someplace to put him, and the controller thought it would be a great idea to put the colonel in charge of Archangel's Hmong tribe."
"To gut Archangel," Reyna whispered hoarsely. "To snatch his soul."
"Ah, yes. The controller knew what would happen and didn't care. Within a week this colonel had begun selling Hmong children to pimps in Saigon; within a month the entire village had gone over to the Pathet Lao. Now, in a beautiful stroke of irony, the South Vietnamese—led by the colonel—were about to make their first commando foray over the border. They planned to wipe out the village.
"After busting up his controller, Archangel stole a heavily armed helicopter and took off for Laos. He intended to warn the village; if necessary to save the village, he intended to fight with the Pathet Lao against the South Vietnamese. He'd turned traitor. Archangel stopped the raid and saved the Hmong, but his helicopter was shot down. Like any legend, he had more lives than a cat; he survived the crash, eluded capture, and a week later came crawling out of the jungle, crossed back over the border, and turned himself in to the Americans—who now had one very large problem. Archangel was thrown into the stockade while everyone put their heads together and tried to figure out what to do with him.
"You see the problem. Literally overnight, the war hero—for whom a tremendous publicity campaign has been planned—turns up a traitor, not to mention a potential source of considerable embarrassment to the United States if he ever tells what he knows. His real identity officially hasn't been made public, but there are enough people who know it to enable some ambitious reporter to track it down. Naturally Archangel could have been put in the stockade for the rest of his life—or even shot. But then, there would be the danger of some reporter—or some historian, like your friend—taking an interest and starting to ask questions. What everyone really wanted was for Archangel to disappear off the face of the earth. And be forgotten.
"It was the controller, obviously a man with a silver tongue, who finally came up with a solution that was acceptable to the Pentagon: Simply let Archangel go— with a few strings trailing behind him. All of his military records are drastically altered, and all of his honors taken away. Then he's given a medical discharge as a psycho. His end of the deal involves keeping his mouth shut and thus avoiding summary execution on some street corner. Needless to say, the whole public-relations idea was dropped."
"Oh, Veil." Reyna sighed.