Loose Cannon: The Tom Kelly Novels

by David Drake

  The analyst had obviously determined to his own satisfaction that the proposed Operation Skyripper was impossible for both political and practical reasons. Kelly sighed. He was inclined to agree with the analyst, but it wasn’t his job to care. If the USG were bound and determined that he was going to run the operation . . . well, there were plenty of slick types in the CIA, recruited from major universities and used to working through cut-outs, go-betweens. . . . Hiring local agents to hire more local agents, so that if the operation went sour—as it usually did—the President could blandly deny that the United States had been involved. Even the Bay of Pigs, an invasion, had been handled that way . . . and no wonder it came out a rat-fuck. But if they wanted deniability, they went Ivy League and Big Ten. If they really wanted results, maybe they went to a cowboy for a change. Maybe they went to Tom Kelly.

  Kelly got up and ran the pitcher full of water. There was the usual pair of six-ounce water glasses beside it. He ignored the glasses, sipping from the pitcher itself as he walked back to the desk. He stared for a long time at the AWOL bag from which he had already unpacked his clothes. In the end he sat down without reaching into the bag again. He flipped the Kenwood receiver to 15 megahertz and then dialed up to the German Wave, thundering out of Wertachtal. With the selector set for wide band and the modulator damping the German pop music by 60 db, Kelly began looking at what he had in the way of assets for the job.

  Besides himself.

  The next document had a separate cover sheet, in some ways the most striking thing about it. It was marked “Top Secret—Dissemination ONLY by order of Director, Defense Intelligence Agency.” On a separate line, typed in red caps, was the additional warning, “NO ACCESS BY CIA PERSONNEL!” Kelly grinned. Well, it was important to know your enemies. And it certainly answered the question of whether he could expect support from the CIA station in Algiers.

  The Defense Attaché’s Office in Algeria consisted of the Attaché, Commander William Posner, US Navy; and his staff, Sergeant E-6 Douglas Rowe, US Army. Rowe had an armor specialty. The two men and their predecessors had been trying to get a clerk-typist for their office, but they had been unable to justify one to the boys in budget. The only typist in the mission with a Top Secret clearance was the Ambassador’s secretary—who was actually Third Secretary for Administration, in order to get her on the Diplomatic List with all the privileges that entailed. The Defense Attaché was rather low on his Excellency’s list of priorities, so reports from Algiers were consistently late. That did not seem to bother anybody at headquarters enough to spring for a typist slot, though, probably because the reports were pretty dull reading even by the undemanding standards of the DIA. Posner spoke some French. Neither of the men on the ground had any Arabic, much less Kabyle.

  And the Kabyles were the key to Skyripper, if there was a key at all.

  At first Kelly thought that he had never heard of the Kabyles, but a quick reading of other background documents showed him his error: he had known them as “Berbers,” that was all. “Berber” meant just what it sounded like, “barbarian.” As with “Welsh,” ,” and “Eskimo,” it was a name affixed by foreigners and never used by the ethnics themselves when their ethnicity became important. The Kabyles were both the Barbary Pirates and the Moors who overran Spain in the name of Allah.

  And they were not Arabs, any more than the Cherokees were English. The West had a tendency to equate Moslems and Arabs. That mistake was made by Arabs only when they were dreaming of Third World hegemony the same way the Russian Pan-Slavs of 1900 had dreamed of an ideal state dominated from Moscow. Every Moslem state had its Arabizers, just as British India had had its Babus. The Arabizers tended to be intellectuals with their values shaped at universities in Cairo and Beirut rather than in their native lands. In Algeria, they held virtually all the top posts in the government and army. They had done so since the French were driven out, though the bombed-out farms in the Kabyle Highlands still bore testimony to who had really done the fighting which led to that victory. There were already signs that the fighting was about to resume, and that this time the outside overlords would be Arabs and not Frenchmen.

  Operational planning had started even before a courier from the DAO in Berne had caught Kelly making a sales presentation to a Volkswagen dealership in Basel. Another courier had been sent to Algiers, ordering Commander Posner to give full support to the agent or contract officer, as yet undetermined, who would be arriving soon. Further, the Attaché was ordered to alert his contacts within the Kabyle underground to a coming need for manpower and other support. The USG would pay for such support with up to one million dollars in gold or any desired currency and—Kelly whistled, clashing with the radio’s rendition of “Danke”—full US support for establishment of a Kabyle Government in Exile in Rabat, Morocco.

  Kelly got up and walked to the sink, partly to refill the pitcher. Mostly he needed to move as he thought. He wondered how the button-down types in the Fudge Factory at State had taken that news. Not real well, he suspected. It meant the probable end to diplomatic relations between Algeria and the USG, whatever came of the defection attempt itself. This thing was big, it was so big it scared him. Why in God’s name they’d picked him to run the show. . . .

  Kelly took the 750-milliliter bottle of Johnny Walker Red out of the bag. Scotch to Americans, malt to an Englishman; whiskey to the rest of the world. Kelly preferred Tennessee sour-mash whiskey, but you didn’t find that outside the States except maybe as a dusty bottle on a high shelf in big liquor stores. Scotch you could find from Iceland to Japan . . . and besides, it didn’t matter that much, Kelly had drunk peppermint schnapps when that was handiest; and if he preferred the taste of hog piss to peppermint schnapps, it had done the job just the same. He needed a drink now, needed it bad. But Kelly gulped water instead and sat down with the file. The dapper man in hunting pinks winked knowingly from the bottle’s label at the American.

  Outsiders could not be expected to reach Professor Vlasov, but Dr. Hoang would certainly be able to renew his acquaintance. No eyebrows would be raised by a private conference between physicists representing two communist states allied against the Chinese between them. That left the problem of contacting Hoang; but that, given modern electronics, shouldn’t be insuperably difficult. As he continued to read through the assortment of documents, Kelly began arraying mentally the support and equipment he would request from General Pedler—and the back up he would arrange for himself. There were some things he did not intend to tell anyone in the Paris embassy. A passport, for instance. Nobody in the USG was going to know what documents Kelly was traveling under. In his years of knocking around Europe, Kelly had met people who could do the necessary job as well or better than anybody in a CIA smokeshop. Why use a false passport if you knew a Consul who would issue a real one for the right incentive?

  And what if somebody talked to a girlfriend or a drinking buddy? A salesman who might be planning to run a load of hash under a squeaky-clean passport wouldn’t interest anybody around the Russian Embassy. Government ID for Tom Kelly, a French-speaker who’d been on both ends of automatic rifles in his day—that was something else. And people do talk, no matter who they are, when their pricks are hard or they’re half-seas over.

  There was no way to be sure how well Commander Posner would be holding up his end, with his Level 2 French and a naval officer’s rigid disapproval of something this unconventional. Time would tell, too goddamned little time, ten days. But at least a sailor could be expected to take orders, however much he might dislike them. Kelly sighed and ran his index finger over the embossed label of the whiskey bottle. And then he went back to the file.

  V

  Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Van Minh dropped the report back on his desk. He shook his head toward the mountains out the window. If he read between the lines correctly, it was not simply a knifing he had to deal with. The fight between two of his staff, guards at the Dalat Nuclear Facility, had occurred during an argument over the prowess of t
heir respective regiments during the War of Liberation.

  Both men, might they rot in Kampuchea where he was transferring them, had been on the losing—Southern—side.

  Colonel Nguyen sighed and loosened the collar of his uniform tunic. Bao, his predecessor as Chief of Facility Security, had been incompetent, no doubt about that. But how he had failed to do even basic background checks on these two . . . and how many other ex-Airborne and Marine personnel were still on the staff of this crucial part of the defense establishment? The situation no longer reflected on Bao’s honor, it reflected on Nguyen’s own.

  The phone rang. Nguyen snatched it as if it were a rope out of his administrative morass. “Security,” he snapped. The colonel was his own secretary. He spoke to anyone who called . . . and they had better have very good reasons to call him.

  This caller did. Even before he spoke, the background wail identified a trunk line from the North. “Minh, good morning,” squeaked the voice of the head of the Army Intelligence Bureau. “How would you like to take a little trip?”

  Nguyen tensed. “General,” he said, “I will be pleased to serve the State in whatever capacity she needs me, of course.” For fifteen years, during the War of Liberation, Nguyen had spent more nights in the open than he had under a roof. After the victory, the Northerners had continued to load him with the dog work—including six months of shepherding gas rockets around Kampuchea. “Whatever capacity,” the colonel repeated, “but matters here in Dalat are at a—critical stage. Surely there is someone besides my own unworthy self who can deal with whatever problem you are having in Kampuchea?”

  “No, no,” interrupted General Ve. “You don’t understand. This is a sort of vacation, a reward for you, Minh.”

  “That’s what you said about this job,” the colonel retorted more bitterly than was politic. “‘Beautiful scenery, no danger—just a few administrative problems. . . .’ Do you know who that idiot Bao hired for plant security?”

  “If you’ll listen for a moment, Colonel,” the distant voice said harshly, “you’ll be better able to judge your orders, won’t you?”

  “Right, sorry, General,” Nguyen said. He forced himself to relax. His service during the War of Liberation had been second to no one’s; but Nguyen was a Southerner by birth, a member of the Viet Cong and the National Liberation Front—not the Hanoi establishment. Hanoi was in firm control since its armies had pushed home their invasion and achieved what twenty years of guerrilla warfare had failed to do. It behooved Nguyen to remember his place—or find himself commanding a garrison battalion in Kampuchea, an even worse job than that of the chemical warfare detachment to which he had already been assigned.

  “You know this conference in Algiers that your Doctor Hoang will be attending?” said the general. The momentary asperity seemed forgotten.

  “Yes, of course,” Nguyen said. “I understand that he’ll be escorted by a team from the central office.” Of course a plum assignment like that would go to toadies from the Hanoi office. During the War, Nguyen had suffered in order to end injustice. Now—but if he thought too long about such things, the result would be a blast of homicidal fury which would serve no one, least of all the State.

  “That was the original intention, yes,” General Ve agreed. “It appears, however—despite my personal intervention—that the Treasury will not release enough hard currency to permit more than one person from this office to accompany the Doctor.”

  “Yes?” prompted Nguyen. He held his breath in a hope that he would not admit even to himself.

  “And I have determined that you are the best suited member of the Bureau for the assignment as it has developed, Minh,” the general went on. “To act as sole escort, that is.”

  The colonel was afraid to ask the obvious question, but it had to be asked if he were to know what he was getting into. “Ah, General,” he said, “I’m flattered, very flattered . . . but why me?”

  General Ve coughed, a bark of sound over the bad connection. “Well, you see, Colonel,” he said, “I took another look at the list of attendees and . . . the size of the Chinese delegation concerns me. They have, I’m sure, a notion of our purpose in reactivating the Dalat Reactor. And they surely know of Doctor Hoang’s importance to the program. Frankly, I tried to quash the whole trip, but Hoang seems to have convinced—certain officials—that his presence at the Conference will be valuable to his work. And also, the head of the Russian delegation has expressed a desire to see Hoang again. . . . Their Professor Vlasov, the one who visited last month. So Hoang is going, and well. . . .”

  “General, I’m very flattered,” Nguyen repeated. He was waving his free hand in the air in silent joy.

  “Well, Colonel,” Ve said. “I wouldn’t want you to think that we in Hanoi were unaware of your . . . ability. Not that I really think the Chinese would try something at an international conference, but—” He paused.

  “As well to be sure,” Nguyen completed.

  “Exactly,” agreed the general, “exactly. We’re working in liaison with our Russian friends. I’m sure you’ll be able to share the duties with their contingent. You’ve worked with them before, I believe?”

  “The technicians with the poison gas equipment,” Nguyen agreed. “Yes, their manpower should be very helpful.”

  “Well, the written orders will be along in due course,” General Ve said. “I just wanted to make sure you had time to take care of any arrangements in Dalat before you left. Good day, Colonel.”

  “Good day,” Nguyen said to a dead line. He cradled the phone.

  Arrangements. Well, somebody had to vette the entire guard staff, it appeared. Truong could handle that. Truong damned well better be able to handle that. As for trip preparations. . . .

  Nguyen opened the top drawer of his desk. He took out the pistol, removing the magazine before he locked back the slide. The round in the chamber spun out onto the pile of paperwork. It was an old weapon, a Tokarev TT-33, thirty years obsolete in Soviet service.

  Nguyen had killed sixty-two men with it when he headed an assassination team during the War. The Colonel worked the slide several times, studying its action with a critical eye. He had better get in some range time before he went to Algiers. Just in case.

  VI

  “Can’t say I’m in much of a hurry this time, Specialist Phillips,” Tom Kelly remarked as he got in through the door the driver insisted on holding open for him.

  Phillips was grinning as he walked back around the hood and settled himself behind the steering wheel. “I’m glad to hear that, sir,” he said, putting the Concord in gear, “because I scared the crap out of myself the last time.” He chuckled. “Not as bad as I scared the lieutenant, though.”

  The gate guard saluted as the sedan passed him sedately. Anybody picked up at the front of the embassy was worth a salute. It was a lot cheaper than explaining to the Gunny why you’d ignored the CinC Med, who happened to have been in civvies that afternoon. . . .

  “Ah, look, sir,” the driver went on, watching traffic and not his passenger, “I, ah, heard about what you did for me. And well, if there’s ever something you need and I’ve got—well, look me up, huh?”

  Kelly grinned back. “Hell,” he said, “you just did what you were told to do. I only made sure that if anything happened because you followed a damned fool’s orders, that the USG knew it could whistle for any help it was going to need from me.” Kelly paused, watching the buildings past Phillips’ face. Traffic in the left lane was sweeping around them, but the sedan’s tires were riding the rough pavement with only a modicum of discomfort. “Where did you happen to hear about that, anyway?” Kelly added, as if the answer did not matter to him.

  “Oh, a buddy of mine drives most nights for the Adjutant,” Phillips said. “You know, when he’s going off to a reception and doesn’t want the flics to stop him driving home plotzed. He was talking to the Assistant Air Attaché. . . .” The driver shot a look over at his passenger. “We’re machines, you know. Typew
riters and telephones and drivers . . . but you know.”

  “Sure,” said the civilian. “I know how it is.” His skin was flashing hot and dry in pulses that came and went as his heart beat. “What do they say about my chances of getting the job done?” he asked, wondering if his voice sounded as odd to the driver as it seemed to his own ears.

  “Look, sir,” Phillips said in sudden concern. “I didn’t mean they were talking about—whatever you and the general have on.” The driver was frowning, dividing his attention between his passenger and the traffic. “General Pedler’s been playing that one real close, I think. That is—I’ve heard a lot about you in the past couple days, Mr. Kelly, but it’s all been about what a mean SOB you are. Not whatever you’re doing.”

  Kelly laughed in a combination of relief and irony. “Yeah, I’ve been acting ill as a denned bear,” he agreed. “Could just be that’s the way I am, too.” Phillips had turned down the narrow Faubourg St. Jacques, between the massive and ancient hospital complexes of Port Royal and Cochin. Either the pedestrians had a somber look or Kelly’s mind gave them one. He wouldn’t have been alive himself without a damn good surgeon and all the help that science and centuries of other surgeons trying to improve on past practice could give. Even so, hospitals always reminded Kelly more of death than salvation. These, with their 17th Century stonework blackened and corroded by soot, gave him the creeps even worse than most such places did.

  “But it could also be . . .” Kelly continued. He was looking out his window at the domes and colonnades of the Paris Observatory, not toward the man to whom he was speaking. “It could also be that I’m scared, and if I’m a big enough bastard, then nobody else may notice how scared I am. Could just be.”

  “Everybody gets scared,” the driver said, relaxing a little over the wheel. “You aren’t the sort to lock up when you get scared, are you? So what’s it matter?”