“And naturally, when Johnson finally came around to our way of thinking, got it through his head at last that the so-called brain boys he’d inherited from Kennedy had either snookered him and the country or had been just blowing wind all along, it was too late in the game, way too late for anything short of a nuclear strike, and even in the extremes to which he’d been driven by events, he knew better than to order that.”
“It just might’ve been just what the doctor ordered, General,” stated Mito grimly. “That way, we wouldn’t even have needed to risk planes and crews, just delivered the load by missile.”
Barstow shook his head. “Milo, you’ve spent a whole hell of a lot of time out of the country, and so I doubt seriously that you’re aware of some facts. One of them is this: a whole lot of people in the U.S. of A. are scared absolutely shitless of doing any frigging thing that conceivably might upset the fucking Russians enough for them to throw their nukes at us, and not all of these people are in any way, shape or form the least bit pink, not that our own native crop of Marxist traitors don’t use that lever and any other they can lay hands on to discombobulate their fellow citizens, retard our war effort—such as it’s been—and speed the Communist conquest of Southeast Asia.
If Johnson or anyone else in a position of power had seriously proposed even a small-scale, surgical strike against North Vietnam with nukes, oh, Lordy, there would’ve erupted such a shitstorm that it would have had to be seen and heard and endured to be believed. Even if some rabid, leftist member of the defeatist press hadn’t had it leaked to him by a fellow traveler in the DOD or the White House, you can bet your bloody arse that one or more of our pack of Commie-lovers in the legislative branch would’ve had it in the papers and on the air in nothing flat. I tell you, Milo, certain elements of the news media have proven themselves of more value to the Reds in this war than five or ten full divisions of the NVA. To hear or to read the shit put out by those scaremongers, the whole damned country is in a state of constant turmoil and all of our allies are appalled at what we’re doing in and to Vietnam and are turning away from us in droves, as consequence. In the holy name of First Amendment rights, these bastards are cynically betraying their own, native land to the fucking Commies.
“The newspapers would be bad enough, Milo, but the fucking TV is a goddam monster. You remember the old blood-and-guts training films we used to use? The ones that had fucking trainees fainting and puking their guts out? Well, compared to the footage the fucking networks are broadcasting all over America right at suppertime these days, those training films would be about as shocking as any damned Disney cartoon would be, anymore.”
Milo’s visitor sighed gustily and shook his head forcefully. “Lordy, Lordy, how I do carry on. Build me another drink, will you. My tirades always leave me dry as the Mojave. But I’m not the only one who blows off on occasion and calls spades fucking shovels, am I, Milo?”
Milo looked at Barstow quizzically for a moment, then abruptly nodded. “You heard about me telling off that peckerhead over at the Pentagon, huh? Tell me, how in the hell did something like Henshaw get to an apparent position of some power over there, anyway?”
Barstow’s lips twisted in a moue of disgust. “Oh, hell, Milo, you ought to’ve guessed that already—he and a whole pisspot more just like him came in at the start of the Kennedy administration. But you guessed right on the power—he’s been there more than eleven years, assiduously kissing asses and, more likely than not, sucking carefully selected cocks as well, and not just in the Pentagon, either. He’s managed to acquire a goodly collection of ears, which means that your performance at his office the other day has wedged your scrotum into a crack, my friend.”
Barstow grinned. “Not that I don’t like whatall you told the bastard. I couldn’t’ve said it better myself.” He chuckled. “I liked it so well, in fact, that I played that tape over three times, Milo.”
“Henshaw recorded our, ahhh … conversation, then, General?” demanded Milo.
Taking a drink from his new glass, Barstow waved his hand, then lowered the glass from his lips and shook his head. “No, no, no, Milo, Henshaw doesn’t even know a tape was made. Some of my people made it … well, people who work ostensibly for someone else, but also for me, actually—wheels within wheels within other wheels, if you get my drift.”
Milo recalled the almost identical expression spoken by Barstow almost thirty years before, in Munich. “Just like all your earlier operations, General?”
This time the visitor laughed and nodded, smiling broadly. “Mais oui, mon vieux! Deception has always been my stock in trade, it’s what gives value to my services … which don’t, any of them, come at all cheaply. I’m shrewd and as devious as old hell, but I’m an honest man, too, I never yet have failed to give value for value. And that dictum applies to both employers and employees, Milo.”
Milo sighed. “Am I about to hear yet another recruitment pitch, General?”
“Not really, no.” Barstow set down his glass of ice and gazed over steepled fingers at his host. “After all, what is there that I could offer you for service to me, eh? Money? Hell, you’re richer than old Croesus ever dreamed of being, right now. Rank? If you’d cared at all about that, you’d’ve played ball with the army these last ten or so years; besides, few of us are or are known to be military personnel, anyway—you recall that surely from the work you were so kind as to do for me in Indochina, back in ’fifty-four. And in that regard, Milo, I still feel that I owe you a bundle for that, so tell me, my old friend, what can we do for you?”
Seeing the old pain in Barstow’s eyes, sensing the humility of guilt in his voice, Milo put iron into his own words. “Stop it now, General. I’ll tell you now just what I told you eighteen years ago: Martine’s—my wife’s—death was not your fault, not in any way your fault. Understand? Like many another innocent before and since, she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and those circumstances conspired to kill her.”
“But, Milo,” said Barstow, “it was me who persuaded you to go on leave from the army and take passage to Saigon as a tourist, as just a seemingly ordinary tourist, dammit.”
Milo nodded once. “Yes, and you said not a word about Martine going along with me. That was purely her decision. I tried to talk her out of the notion, to dissuade her, several times over. But she retorted that as I’d been away at war for over three years, she deserved and meant to have at least the next three years of my time. What could I say after that? So she went with me, thrilled to be again in a French-speaking city, among Frenchmen and their families, military folks, who knew her family of old.” He paused, then went on, “Even had I had the heart to stop her, I doubt that I could’ve done so other than physically, at that point.”
Barstow shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not, Milo, but I could have done it, very easily … and I’ll always regret that I didn’t, it will always be one of the crosses I must bear to my very grave. No.” He raised his hand once more. “Let me finish, tell it all, you’ve the right to know just how I used the situation, used her, to what I then thought my and your advantage, damn me for the cold, callous, calculating fool that I was.