The Whitehall Mandarin

by Edward Wilson

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Another Chinese piled in and knocked me to the ground. Now, I was a pretty tough kid. I didn’t like being hit. The red mist descended. I managed to get an elbow into the Chinese guy’s face and split his nose open. Then I got on top of him and started choking him to death.’ Bucksport sipped his whisky and laughed. ‘I don’t think I would be here to tell the tale if I had done that in a Jap PoW camp or a Nazi one. But the Chinese still got pretty mad at me. I was bruised and bloody when I woke up in a cage. They decided I didn’t appreciate the pleasures of Pyoktong – that was the name of the camp – so they transferred me to Pukchin Mining Camp, which the other PoWs nicknamed Death Valley.

  ‘The worst part was the trip there. They put my cage in the back of a truck and we could only travel at night because of the American bombing. When we stopped they turned me into a circus attraction. Villagers used to come to gawp at me and I would rattle my cage bars and make noises like an ape. I used to throw shit at them if they got too close. The Chinese liked my act. They must have thought it proved that Americans were barbarians – but I was doing it to show that if you treat someone like an animal, they act like an animal.’ Bucksport paused. ‘Then we got to Pukchin and that was that. Conditions weren’t that much worse than Pyoktong – and I realised that the reason they moved me wasn’t to punish me, but so that I wouldn’t contaminate the other prisoners with my attitude.’

  ‘Did you ever see the Englishman again?’

  ‘No, but I would like to.’ Bucksport smiled. ‘I’d like to apologise to your English friend for damaging his book. It was the one I threw at the Chinese guy: Karl Marx’s Theories of Surplus Value. And the funny thing was that I was beginning to like it.’

  ‘I think he lives in Moscow. You could send him a replacement copy.’

  ‘Maybe you could do it for me?’ The colonel looked at Catesby darkly. ‘Who do you really work for?’

  ‘You can believe what you want. But does it matter?’

  ‘I suppose it doesn’t – but I’m not going to tell you more than you need to know regardless of who you are.’

  ‘What do I need to know?’

  ‘I haven’t finished my story.’ For the first time Bucksport sounded a little slurred.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I was released from Pukchin PoW camp on 19 September 1953. After medical checks by the UN authorities, I was turned over to the Americans. More medical checks and debriefings then back to the USA and my beloved Harriet.’

  ‘How did you end up in the US Army?’

  ‘I had had enough of the Marines – I wanted to do something different. But I wanted to stay in the military because that was the only life I knew. And I didn’t want to give away the surplus value of my labour in a civilian job.’

  ‘Is that a joke?’

  ‘Yeah. But it wasn’t a joke I could tell anyone. I got into Special Forces when the unit was just starting up. I started off as a sergeant, but a few years later they gave me a direct commission as a captain and made me an A team leader. We were supposed to be parachuted behind Soviet lines in Eastern Europe if the Cold War ever turned hot. Our job was to rendezvous with partisans and blow up Russian supply lines. I suspect that we would have been rounded up and shot within a couple of hours after we landed, but I kept my mouth shut about that because I wanted to play the game and work my way up through the ranks. I had Harriet and two daughters to support. So I kept getting promoted – and here I am now, el supremo for the northern corps. But you know something? They’ve never trusted me. That’s why that CIA bastard sent you up here.’

  ‘Can you explain?’

  ‘First of all, they don’t really trust anyone who has ever been a PoW in Korea. They think we’re all some kind of Manchurian candidate who has been brainwashed to kill the President. CIA hate Special Forces. They want to run the whole spook business themselves. And they also think I’m a maverick who needs cutting down.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Lots of reasons. In particular, because I won’t let Program Phoenix, their assassination squads, operate in any of my AOs. So here’s the drill. They’ve sent you up here chasing Lopez because they want to see me fuck up. In fact, they blame me for the whole Lopez mess.’

  ‘How well did you know Lopez?’

  ‘Enough to know that he was a fucked-up kid with lots of brains. He’d been educated in France and then went to Harvard.’

  ‘Why was he fucked up?’

  ‘Because he didn’t know who he was. I think his mother was a Tijuana hooker who didn’t even know who the father was. She must have given him away to this rich family back East who adopted him. His stepparents were not only rich, but prominent and powerful liberals – real American aristocracy. So you have this guy, Lopez, who had all the manners and ways of an old money East Coast preppy, but the face of a mixed-race mestizo – the sort of urchin you’d see rooting through the garbage in a Juarez dump. I don’t know what made him snap and do that awful thing.’

  The story that Catesby had heard was that Lopez had helped the Viet Cong overrun a Special Forces outpost in which all the Americans had been killed. ‘Do you think he’s still alive?’

  ‘We’ve had confirmed sightings from captured VC and NVA – and also from two of our agents. What’s the slimy bastard in Saigon want you to do?’

  ‘He wants me to kill him.’

  ‘You’d never get out alive.’

  ‘I know, but as an alternative he wants me to provide intelligence if I get behind enemy lines – and he also mentioned your old Australian pal, Burchett.’

  ‘Two birds with one stone.’

  ‘Or maybe three.’

  Bucksport suddenly looked cautious. ‘Did CIA tell you there might be someone else?’

  ‘No, I’ve heard a rumour from elsewhere.’

  ‘A young Western woman?’

  Catesby nodded.

  ‘I wish that kids wouldn’t get mixed up in this mess, but most of our soldiers are kids too.’ Bucksport stood up and drew a curtain, which revealed a map. ‘If CIA wants me to “render you all assistance”, as the Eyes Only message instructed, I’d better put you in the picture.’ Bucksport pointed to a mountainous area directly on the Laotian border. ‘Lopez was last sighted in this grid square. The easiest way to get there is to hitch a ride in a Russian truck from Hanoi. That’s what CIA ought to have told you, but it’s not easy from this side of the border because there aren’t any roads. What that bastard in Saigon would love me to do is give you a lift in one of my helicopters – preferably with me in it. In the unlikely event we didn’t get shot down, he would then accuse me of running unauthorised intelligence operations outside my AO. SOG can go in that area – and further west towards Tchepone too – but I can’t. And the reason why SOG goes there is to pick up Golden Triangle heroin. It’s the safest operation those poor bastards do. They fly them in Korean War-era Sikorsky choppers they must have got from the helicopter museum. The North Vietnamese know what it’s about as soon as they see those ancient choppers so they don’t shoot at them. The heroin that doesn’t go up the veins of live in-country GIs goes up the asses of dead GIs awaiting repatriation back to the States in the I Corps mortuary at Da Nang airbase. If CIA really wanted to help you he would have sent you to the SOG FOB, which is just down the beach.’

  ‘So there’s not much you can do?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve that Saigon doesn’t know about.’ Bucksport pointed to the map. ‘There’s a leper colony here at Thuong Duc run by Australian Bible Society missionaries. Ever heard of them?’

  Catesby shook his head.

  ‘The mission of the Bible Society is to translate the Bible into languages where there is no translation. Most of the patients at the leper colony are Katu montagnards. The Katu not only have no Bible, they have no written language to write it in. The missionaries at Thuong Duc are first-class anthropologists and linguists and are trying to create a written language for the Ka
tu.’

  ‘What’s this have to do with my finding Lopez?’

  Bucksport sipped his whisky. He had turned a corner and seemed more coherent, the more he drank. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t spotted it. The answer’s Wilfrid Burchett. The Bible Society leper colony is immune from attack or harassment by the VC and NVA – and I suspect it’s because of Burchett. He isn’t that bad a man and must have a soft spot for his fellow Australians.’

  Bucksport pointed to the map. ‘Now what I can do is put you on a helicopter for the leper colony. That’s no problem because we’ve got an A camp just the other side of the river – and we sometimes drop in relief supplies to the lepers.’ He paused. ‘And I’ll tell you another secret. I’m sick of war. I got two months more to do and then I go back and retire. Now, if you’re lucky, you might be able to contact Burchett at the colony. But make sure you’ve been taking your dapsone; you don’t want to become a leper.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Catesby looked into his whisky. ‘But what if the rendezvous with Burchett doesn’t come off?’

  ‘If Burchett doesn’t show, you’ve got to make your way up this river.’ Bucksport pointed to a blue line that writhed like a serpent through the coastal plain. ‘It’s called the Song Thu Bon and empties into the sea at Hoi An. Go up past the marine base at An Hoa. You might check out the coal mine at Nong Son. They also seem to have worked out a deal with the VC and NVA. But you want to stay on the river till this place.’ He pointed to a narrow gorge. ‘The NVA buy rice and food supplies in the Que Son Valley and ferry them across the river here then porter them up into the mountains to the 2nd NVA Division. But you need to be careful and lucky; that river crossing is bombed to fuck. Needless to say, I never told you any of this. But even if I did, my ass is still covered for your job is to waste Lopez so I was only helping you, as were my instructions.’

  ‘Where do you think I’m most likely to find him?’

  ‘Probably across the border in Laos in one of the five base areas. Forget about the Ho Chi Minh Trail as being a mass of barefoot peasants acting as human pack animals or pushing heavily laden bicycles. And only Americans call it the Ho Chi Minh Trail; its real name is the Truong Son Strategic Supply Route. It’s a web of roads, some paved with gravel, and the supplies are carried in trucks. The trucks shuttle the logistics between waypoints where the supplies are trans-loaded on to the next truck relay.’ The colonel laughed. ‘The people who think we’re fighting a guerrilla army have got their heads up their ass. One of the engineer regiments maintaining the Truong Son has twenty bulldozers, eleven road graders, three rock crushers and two steamrollers. If you get there you will find oil pipelines, underground supply depots, barracks, communication centres, classrooms and hospitals. This war is America’s Stalingrad. And just like the Germans, we believe our own propaganda of invincible power and have grossly underestimated the enemy.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  Bucksport shook his head. He suddenly looked very weary.

  ‘I hope you have a good retirement.’

  ‘It won’t be good. My wife died last year.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘But you’ve got to soldier on. Maybe I’ll go to college and try to learn something.’

  ‘I think you could teach them more than they could teach you.’

  »»»»

  Catesby spent the night in the transient officers’ billet. It was an old French beach house built of grey weathered clapboard with a wide veranda facing the beach. He lay awake under a mosquito net listening to the gentle sough of the sea. Once again, Catesby realised that he didn’t know what he was doing or why he was doing it. The Americans didn’t know what they were doing either, so they just threw around money and bombs. Catesby understood he had now become immersed in the pointless waste and brutality that swirled around him. He could see that the CIA man regarded him as a passing pest who had to be shut up with either bullets or dollars. Bucksport, on the other hand, was a lone voice in the wilderness.

  Catesby lay awake sweating into a not very clean sheet. He wasn’t going to give up and tried to focus on why he was there. Why had Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service sent him to the middle of a mad Asian war to find and interview the daughter of a Whitehall mandarin? Why was her mother’s role in a hushed-up spy scandal still important? The loss of secrets was now irrelevant. So why was he there? It wasn’t a matter of an external threat to the UK; it was a matter of an internal threat. Catesby had seen their mad eyes gleaming with resentment. They hated Harold Wilson’s government and they hated the way Britain was changing. They were looking for an excuse, any excuse. Catesby saw his job clearly. He had to find out what had happened – and then bury the whole mess where the plotters could never find it.

  »»»»

  In the morning Catesby waited for the Thuong Duc helicopter with the Greek-speaking officer who had met him at the airbase.

  ‘It shouldn’t be a bad ride,’ said the officer. ‘Thuong Duc isn’t taking any incoming at the moment. The old man said you want to do a story on the leper colony. We’ll land at Thuong Duc camp first, then drop you off. The leper place is just across the river.’

  ‘I might be staying there a while. How do I get a lift back?’

  ‘There’s a radio link with the camp. Just call them up and say you want a ride.’

  The rest of the conversation was drowned out by helicopter noises. The flight was a dog leg over the sea to avoid anti-aircraft fire, then high over the coastal plain. Catesby made out the river, the Song Thu Bon, and a tributary that twisted north to Thuong Duc. The countryside was a mixture of steep mountains and soft paddy fields. The Thuong Duc camp was a sand-coloured rectangle at the base of a mountain with almost vertical slopes. Catesby turned to watch the two teenage helicopter pilots as they calmly guided the helicopter through a series of feints to avoid ground fire as they approached the camp. Their cool competence seemed the only sane thing in Vietnam.

  The chopper quickly offloaded personnel and supplies on a dusty square, then made the short hop across the river to the leper colony and landed on a grassy rise. A bespectacled middle-aged woman, who held a bush hat to protect her face from the whirling dust, was waiting.

  »»»»

  The bespectacled Australian woman was Mildred. Years in the sun had turned her skin leathery brown and made her intense blue eyes all the more piercing. She looked like everyone’s stereotype of a Sunday school teacher, but her manner was softer. ‘My parents,’ she said, ‘were members of the Bible Society and I suppose that’s how I got involved.’

  It was late at night and all the staff and patients had gone to bed. The only sounds were an occasional moan from the sleeping wards or the rumble of distant artillery. Catesby and Mildred were sitting on opposite sides of a table with a single guttering candle. The electricity generators were off for the night. The thing that had immediately impressed Catesby was the cleanliness and utter tidiness. The building, red shutters and tiled roof, looked like a villa in the South of France.

  ‘Have you been taking your dapsone?’asked the woman with a maternal look.

  ‘Yes, religiously.’

  ‘Good. But you probably don’t need it; 95 per cent of the population are naturally immune – as I most certainly am. There are so many myths about leprosy.’

  ‘Like your limbs falling off?’

  ‘They don’t fall off, but they do become deformed as you probably noticed today. Secondary infections cause cartilage to be absorbed into the body, which is why many of our patients have fingers and toes that are so badly misshapen.’

  ‘Are you are a doctor?’

  The woman smiled. ‘I’m a doctor on two accounts. I’m a medical MD and a PhD in anthropology.’

  Catesby was mildly abashed. ‘Are you very religious?’

  She smiled again. ‘I knew you were going to ask that question. I’m religious in that I believe all human beings are the same family and come from the same source – whatever that is.’ She shrugged. ‘An
d I believe the Bible is evidence of our common ancestry. Muslims, Christians and Jews all claim to be descendants of the tribe of Abraham. And the Greek Prometheus, nailed to a mountain as punishment for giving fire to mankind, is awfully close to Christ. Would you like me to pop you another tinny of Fosters before they get warm?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Good, I’ll have one too.’

  As the Australian fetched the lager from the now silent fridge, Catesby felt once again that he had been catapulted into a world as surreal as Dalí’s lobster telephones. He and Mildred had begun the evening discussing the recent Ashes tour to the background noise of American artillery fire pounding a nearby ridgeline. As the shells fell, Catesby was pleased to discover that England had scraped a series draw in the fifth test when Underwood had taken seven wickets.

  ‘The fascinating thing,’ said the woman as she sipped her Fosters straight from the tin, ‘is the way that creation myths overlap.’

  Once again, Catesby felt the surreal boat of Vietnam surf down another wave.

  ‘We’ve managed to complete an oral translation of Genesis into the eastern Katu dialect.’

  Catesby had already learned that the 50,000 Katu montagnards spoke three different dialects that were not mutually comprehensible.

  ‘The Katu,’ the woman continued, ‘simply love the story of Noah because it’s so close to their own creation story.’

  ‘They built an ark?’

  ‘No, but there was a flood. The Katu tried to escape by fleeing up the tallest mountains. In the end, all the mountains were covered by the flood waters and every person and every land animal had drowned – except for one Katu and one dog who had found safety on the highest peak.’

  ‘Was the dog’s name Adam?’

  ‘Don’t be rude and drink your beer. But it’s interesting that you say that because the Katu was a young woman – which reflects their being a matriarchal society. In any case, the woman had sex with the dog and her children became the forebears of the Katu tribe.’

  ‘A very modest creation myth.’