The airport at Vientiane was not the worst Walter had ever seen but it was near the top of any such list. The tower, such as it was, identified his Southern Air flight as one coming in from Burma. Actually, it had been a quick and easy trip from Saigon. He left at 06:30 and was in his hotel in Vientiane in time for breakfast. His passport and other papers said he was Fred Russo, an American engineer from Chicago. Quite an irony, he thought. Freddy Russo.
His mission in Laos was simple. Weren’t they all? This time he was to find a Dutchman named Aat van de Steen. They didn’t tell him why. Just find him, they said, and bring back any message the Dutchman wished to transmit-whatever the hell that meant. Van de Steen could be found, they told Walter, with the Yao. The problem, of course, was no one had any idea where the Yao were. “They’re in Laos,” the Colonel said. “Somewhere in fucking Laos.” Walter had three days to prepare. The Colonel said, “We’ll put you in wherever you want. Just tell us where.” On the second day Walter told him. “Get me into Vientiane,” he said.
There were inhabitants in Laos as early as the fourth century, or so Walter had read. The modern history of the small nation began somewhere between 1349 and 1353, depending on who you believed, when the Emperor Fa Ngum founded the landlocked kingdom he called Lang Xang- Land of a Million Elephants. Walter could not wait to see them-the elephants. The Yao had come to Laos some time later, drifting south, migrating from China, desperately looking for some place to live safely. They eventually found their happiness in the Laotian highlands. They settled in and were still there more than half a millennium later. They brought with them a peaceful culture of literacy, scholarship, agriculture and religious intellect. It was a way of life they protected and nourished in their new land. They spoke an almost unknown language, Mian, but the material Walter read about them said they also spoke Lao, Khum and Hmong Njua, the three most common languages of Laos. They were an educated people. Walter hoped some of them also spoke English. When they first arrived, the Yao were few in number. As the centuries passed, they showed no evident desire to expand the size of their tribe. In fact, they did their best to prevent growth. They felt there was safety in numbers-small numbers-and they taught their children accordingly. Among the peoples of Laos-the Lao Loum, Lao Theung and the Yao-the Yao were the tiniest minority.
Walter figured that’s why nobody at Headquarters Company had any idea where they might be. It was clear to him, even in the limited time he had to prepare for this mission, that the ancient Yao had been right. For a mountain people, the fewer of them there were, the more effective was their defense. Their Chinese persecutors did not follow them to Laos. New enemies found them elusive and soon turned to other pursuits, easier prey. The Yao stayed to themselves. Farmers mostly, they were a proud and stable people, firmly rooted in the central highlands for six centuries. Unfortunately for their would-be handlers in the CIA and the U.S. Army, they were damn hard to find.
By 1970, the Central Intelligence Agency had more than thirty case officers actively engaged in Laos. Back in Washington the joke was they had an unlimited budget and had already overspent it. The central tenet of the American CIA was that everybody had a price-no exceptions. Anyone could be bought, even an ancient people like the Yao. Somewhere within that tribe someone in authority would be tempted by the assorted pleasures available in and from the most modern, most powerful civilization on Earth, the United States of America. They were sure this was so because it was true everywhere else in the world. The CIA circled the globe carrying bags of money. The list of their collaborators seemed endless. Had they any doubt at all about the Yao, they had only to look at their success with the Hmong, Laos’ largest ethnic tribal group. To the folks at Langley, the Hmong appeared every bit as backward as the Yao and far more numerous. Their economy centered around opium, and while the Hmong were more sellers and refiners than growers, their fortunes rose and fell with the poppy. To enlist the Hmong in the American battle with North Vietnam, part of the epic struggle to defeat worldwide communist expansion, the CIA was happy to set up shop in the heroin trade. Since the poppy was the cash crop of the Yao, they were certain this tribe of savages would be just as eager for American help as the Hmong had been. If only they could find them. That’s where the Dutchman came in.
Aat van de Steen was an up-and-coming gunrunner. He’d made a few deals in Eastern Europe. According to CIA information, van de Steen had sold weapons to rebels in Georgia and Estonia, and had, as well, provided the Soviets with artillery pieces they dearly sought, artillery made in the United States. Although he was a kid, a youngster still in his twenties, the Dutchman had shown a high degree of skill and a big set of balls. More than once his name was mentioned in important circles in tones of respect. “Jesus Christ,” one Agency Deputy Director had remarked in disbelief. “This kid sold stuff to the Chechens and the Russians at the same time and lived to tell about it?”
At twenty-three, Aat van de Steen got his first contract in Laos. The deal came to him in Indonesia but had really been brokered in Washington. His job was to get to the Yao, determine their needs and capabilities with respect to weapons and report his findings to his Indonesian client. On his end, he would serve as sole supplier for those weapons. His contacts in Indonesia made it plain they had no strong interest in haggling over price. Whatever the Yao could effectively use, van de Steen would see they got it. The cost would be paid, in U.S. dollars, in advance, in Amsterdam. Aat van de Steen was a smart kid. He must have known the money was coming from the CIA. So what. He’d worked before under circumstances where his real client remained masked. And the CIA could not have cared less. Discretion was never a big concern with them. Within the agency was the world’s biggest denial apparatus. A strapping colossus, it came complete with the world’s biggest budget. With all that money, there was nothing they could not effectively deny. Thus, they felt little or no fear of disclosure.
Van de Steen made his way to Laos, traveled inland to the central highlands in search of the Yao and hadn’t been heard from since. The Indonesians were getting jumpy. The CIA waited and wasn’t happy about it. Some back in Langley wrote the young Dutchman off. Dead, they figured. Killed by the Yao, the Hmong, the snakes-who the hell knows what. More than a month had passed. Then they heard, from one of the Hmong commanders in the area, that a white man fitting van de Steen’s description had been seen in the company of some Yao tribesmen. News of the sighting was only days old. None of the CIA people in country had ever seen or talked to the Yao. Sure, they were in the mountains, but who had any idea where? No one in Vientiane or Washington. No one from the CIA would go looking. “This ain’t Viva Zapata,” one of them said. Someone had heard about a man called The Locator, an Army sergeant in Saigon, and what they heard about him was quite amazing. The word went out. Hours later Walter Sherman was summoned. Three days after that he was enjoying a nap after breakfast in an elegant, old hotel in the middle of Vientiane.