Abandoned: MIA in Vietnam

by Bill Yancey

  “No,” Wolfe said, not looking at Crouch. “I suspect my quest is over.”

  “Well, if you think you need my help, you let me know,” Crouch said. Wolfe smelled alcohol on the pilot’s breath. Crouch turned and started a conversation with a younger woman to his right. “You’re too young and pretty to go to funerals,” he said. Deep in his own thoughts, Wolfe didn’t hear her reply.

  The bus stopped. Wolfe knew they weren’t far from JFK’s burial site because he saw the tourist crowds wandering along in the distance.

  Wolfe stood apart from the family and behind the crowd as the pallbearers bore the casket, following the chaplain to the gravesite. Mrs. Byrnes’s body had not arrived on the horse drawn caisson, but in a navy gray hearse. An NCO oversaw the placement of the American flag, over the coffin and secured against the brisk wind. With the flag in place, the chaplain faced the family members, Kimura, Barnes, and their children, and invited them to sit in chairs in the shade under the green cemetery tent.

  Wolfe scanned the crowd. Slightly edgy and distracted, more than curious about how the day would end, he missed some of the ceremony. The same Buddhist priest Wolfe had seen at the Byrnes’s home followed the navy chaplain’s service with one of his own in Japanese. When the priest finished, the chaplain asked the family to rise. The rifle volley stirred him from him thoughts. He looked up, at the immaculately dressed navy seamen. Behind them, some fifty yards in the distance, he saw a white-haired Asian man facing the grave, intently watching the ceremony. He was in the shadow of a large tree, and partially hidden by smaller trees. Wolfe could not identify him.

  When the bugler sounded Taps, the man in the distance bowed his head. After the bugler’s last note floated away to join the ending ceremonies nearby, the chaplain asked the family to be seated again. The navy NCO folded the flag and presented it to Byrnes’s daughters. Friends and relatives milled about the grave and expressed their condolences to the family. Wolfe watched as an elderly Asian woman and three young men separated from the crowd and began walking toward the man near the tree.

  Weaving his way through the larger group as they returned to the navy bus, Wolfe circled the grave. With failing hearing, intent on catching the man and his family, who started toward JFK’s memorial, Wolfe didn’t hear the black sedan roll up behind him.

  “Dr. Wolfe,” a voice called. Wolfe didn’t look back. He raised his hand to wave good-bye and kept his attention on the small group, which ignored him and walked swiftly away.

  The sound of shoes hitting the pavement rapidly behind him drew Wolfe’s attention. He looked back to find three men in dark suits jogging in his direction. Crap, he thought. He hadn’t run in over a year, having had to stop for orthopedic reasons, but he hadn’t forgotten how. With a thirty-yard head start, he thought he might catch his quarry before the men caught him. He ran, as fast as a sixty-eight year-old with arthritic knees and a bad back can run.

  “Sir!” the man said as he grabbed Wolfe’s elbow. “Stop!” A second man grabbed his other arm. The two men held on tightly. Wolfe was unable to wriggle free.

  They pulled him to a halt, but not before he had gotten within ten yards of his goal. “Jimmy! Jimmy Byrnes!” Wolfe yelled. The couple, followed by three younger men, did not look back. They continued their walk toward the eternal flame on JFK’s grave.

  “Dr. Wolfe,” the man who held his left arm said, “Mr. Narang would like to speak with you, sir.” The men pivoted Wolfe around and walked him back to the street. There a chauffeured black limousine pulled to the curb to meet them. A third man opened the back door.

  Thrust into the back seat of the vehicle, Wolfe found himself sitting down and facing agents Peter Narang and Drew Jaskolski of the CIA. One man sat to Wolfe’s right. Another climbed into the vehicle on his left, pinning him in the middle of the large bench seat. The third man joined the driver in the front of the limo. “Gentlemen,” Wolfe said, only mildly surprised. “Fancy meeting you here. Was that really Jimmy Byrnes I saw?”

  “I thought we had an agreement, Dr. Wolfe,” Narang said. He handed a legal-sized manila envelope to Wolfe. “And I guess you broke it. I believe you left this with a Washington Post correspondent the day before yesterday.”

  Wolfe opened the envelope and pulled out the typewritten exposition that detailed his attempt to find Jimmy Byrnes. He nodded. “How did you get it?” he asked Narang.

  “We’ve had contacts at the Post since Watergate,” Narang said. “Besides, Jeff Bezos is still feeling his way around the newspaper business. He occasionally asks us for our take on international, national, and other sensitive news. He thought this fairy-tale might involve national security.”

  Slipping his narrative back into the envelope, Wolfe said, “So now what?”

  “I’m afraid you have put us in an untenable position, Doctor,” Narang said. “We’ll have to have a conference at Langley.”

  Resigned to his fate, Wolfe slumped in the seat and watched glumly as the limousine turned onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway and headed north toward CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

  CHAPTER 50

  The limousine stopped at the front gate to CIA Headquarters. A man with a semi-automatic weapon checked the driver’s identification and those of the passengers. He then watched on three monitors as the vehicle was scanned for electronic and explosive devices. Wolfe saw multiple close-up views of the undercarriage on one monitor, evidently from cameras built into the road below the car. He heard the guard say, “You’re good. Cleared to Building 104.”

  The chauffeur drove past the huge parking lot filled with vehicles of employees to a six-story building behind the main building. A circular ramp sank into an underground garage. Narang and Jaskolski silently led the way to an elevator at the far end of the garage. Wolfe followed. The three other men trailed him. Despite the seven or eight buttons on the elevator panel, the stainless steel box stopped at B1, one floor above the garage. The doors opened and Wolfe found himself in a large room with what looked like a Transportation Security Administration airport checkpoint on steroids. Five men with assault rifles stood spread out in the windowless room with bare concrete walls. A woman sat in front of a screening booth. Two flat screen monitors faced her and her keyboard.

  “Should I take off my shoes?” Wolfe asked, only partially in jest.

  “No,” the woman said. “Hold your arms over your head and walk through slowly.” To Narang, she read from one of the monitors, “Belt buckle, pen in shirt pocket, car keys, cell phone has been disabled. Reading glasses in pocket with pen. No explosives. No weapons.”

  “Thanks, Jackie,” Narang said. He and the four other men duplicated Wolfe’s dance through the booth.

  The screener did not call out their metal objects. She said, “Matches ID for – ” and gave the agent’s name.

  Still following Narang, Wolfe walked to an elevator on the far side of the room. Jaskolski pushed the button for the sixth floor. When the door opened Jaskolski and the three other men went to the left. “Follow me,” Narang said to Wolfe. He turned to the right. “Don’t get any ideas. They aren’t that far away.”

  “My arm still hurts from the visit with you in the hotel,” Wolfe said. “Ideas are for younger men, I suspect.”

  Narang stopped in front of an unmarked office door. “I will not accompany you into this room,” he said. “I can tell you that we are authorized to use deadly force, should that become necessary. Do you understand?”

  Wolfe tried to swallow, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his dry mouth. He nodded. “Noted,” he said, barely able to speak.

  At the far end of the large room, a white-haired, dark-skinned man sat at a small desk. Wolfe did not recognize him. Face directed downward, the man moved a pen across a stack of papers. Two walls near the desk displayed large maps of SE Asia, with the depiction of Vietnam reaching from the ceiling to the floor directly behind the desk. Two 8 X 10 blow-ups from reconnaissance aircraft or spy satellites depicted changes in f
oliage and were taped over the map. One appeared to say 1973 TH in missing flora, the other USA K. Maps of the Middle East, Europe, the Philippines, and Indonesia covered the third wall.

  Eyes glancing upward at Wolfe, the man grimaced, raised his head, and said, “You’ve been an aggravation for me over the last month, Addy.” He stood and walked around the desk, right arm thrust in Wolfe’s direction. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to eliminate you.”

  Wolfe froze. He recognized the man immediately upon seeing his face. The jade Mother of Quan pendant on a short necklace looked familiar, too. “Eliminate,” he said. “Why?”

  “You know too much. Our recovery program is in danger. Never mind, I’m pulling your leg, Addy,” he chuckled. “You are one persistent s.o.b. How have you been, my friend? How long has it been?”

  “Jimmy Byrnes, you bastard!” Wolfe said. He wrapped his arms around his friend. “What the hell is going on, man? I’ve heard that you died in so many ways, and here you are….” His eyes filled with tears. He put a hand on each shoulder and held Byrnes at a distance staring. “It’s great to see you, Jimmy.”

  “Actually, my legal name is Thien Sang,” Byrnes said. “That’s the name I had when I left Vietnam. Look, have a seat,” he said, pointing to two stuffed chairs near a large window.

  Wolfe sat in one of the chairs, back to the view of the CIA complex. “How? What? Why the secrecy? Son of a—” he said, unable to verbalize his thoughts.

  “Brother Vu said you know most of the story. The final chapters are pretty simple, really. Our boats drifted apart. Mine didn’t sink completely, but by the time I escaped from the flooded hold and got back to the upper deck, we were too far apart to swim. You know what a great swimmer I was. They couldn’t find me after they got their engine going. I drifted south to Indonesia over the next two weeks. Had plenty of food onboard. It rained enough that I had fresh water. I just had to bail all day, every day, so I wouldn’t sink when I fell asleep. I couldn’t patch the bullet holes in the sampan.

  “It took the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees) folks about ten months to find Kim-Ly and Vu. I got to Canada in time to meet my son before she came to the US as the widow of a POW. The Company found me shortly thereafter. Only a few people know I returned.”

  Stunned, although he had suspected, and then knew, Byrnes was somewhere in the United States, and probably local since his family lived in Alexandria, Wolfe remained speechless for a moment. Eventually words migrated from his brain to his tongue. “You work for the CIA?”

  “It’s a special unit. I’ve been its director for the last ten years. We specialize in following up on rumors of MIAs. Initially, we concentrated on the war in Vietnam, and in Laos and Cambodia, of course,” Byrnes explained.

  He pointed to a map on the wall. “We’ve had some success. Before I joined, the CIA had dreadfully little luck. They were too unwieldy, too noticeable. A small army. They couldn’t surprise anyone. Whenever they went on a mission they invariably found the enemy had executed the POW or deserter before they tracked him down. Ultimately, they decided to announce the cancellation of the MIA recovery efforts and make the Recovery Unit top secret. If the Vietnamese thought we had given up looking, there was a better chance we would find the MIAs alive, so the theory went. They insisted I keep my name and remain an MIA. Very few people know I survived being a POW for eighteen years. Unless you have a need to know, you don’t. You’re the first person I know of who has tracked me down.”

  “Don’t people recognize you?” Wolfe asked.

  “Oh, sure, some think they do. When I show them my driver’s license with my new name and speak broken English, they shake their heads and apologize. Many of my high school and academy classmates are dead, of course. We’re at that stage of life. More, including me, don’t look anything like we did when we were younger. And besides, to a lot of white folks all Asians look alike.” Byrnes said. He smiled.

  “Do you have a family?” Wolfe asked, remembering Thien Vu’s mention of a widow to whom Byrnes had been close. “Was that Kim-Ly I saw?”

  “Kim-Ly and I have three sons. You saw them from a distance earlier today at my mother’s funeral. The oldest is almost thirty-two. Youngest is twenty-five.”

  “Have you been back to Vietnam?” Wolfe asked.

  “Who better to search Vietnam for POW-MIAs than me? I’m fluent in the language and can pass for a national,” Byrnes said. “We’ve had some accomplishments. Granted, most MIAs were killed in action or died in captivity, but we have managed to recover some alive and returned some remains. Who and how many is also secret. You won’t read about the live ones in the papers, or hear about them on the news. Only their immediate families are aware. Most have no problem with the secrecy, or of being a part of the WWPP, war witness protection program as they like to call it. Anything to help rescue others.”

  Wolfe sat quietly, trying to digest and understand all that he heard. “You’re really going to let me walk out of here with all that knowledge? You’re not worried about what I may have told the Washington Post?”

  “Addy, I run the Recovery Unit now. If I didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t be here now. Besides, my involvement in the program ends at midnight tonight. The papers on my desk are my retirement papers. I’m an old man, sixty-nine. Soon seventy years-old. I’m going to travel for fun in the future. Kim-Ly wants to visit her home again. So do I. It’s beautiful in the mountains when the rice is full-grown. It’s like golden wheat on the terraces.”

  Another loose thread intruded on Wolfe’s thoughts. “What about Chief Fulton? Did you really tell him to kill Clemons? And those other guys who threw you overboard? Did you or the CIA have anything to do with their deaths? As a matter of national security?”

  Byrnes’s face became stern. The corners of his mouth turned down, but he couldn’t hide the gleam in his eyes. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” he said, then laughed. “Just kidding. We did not assassinate any of those men. You have to admit that criminals and servicemen live uncertain lives. I did see Fulton. I had stopped in to see Clemons in the hospital. It was my last chance to tell him I had forgiven him. When I left the room, he was still alive. As I left the hospital, Fulton met me in the lobby outside the ER. He didn’t look well. I had seen him three or four times in the past. I thought I had explained that I didn’t hold a grudge against him or the other guys, including Jameson. Trying to soothe him, I reiterated that he shouldn’t feel remorse for being too afraid of Deke to yell man overboard. The guilt ate at him anyway.

  “Nevertheless, he asked if I had killed Clemons. I told him no, that it would have been easy to do. All I would have needed was some medication off a crash cart in the ER, if I really wanted him dead. I also told Fulton that I thought Clemons would pass shortly in any event. In his abnormal state of mind, I imagine he must have interpreted that as an order to kill Clemons. The written note was entirely his idea. Certainly stirred things up here at CIA headquarters. Put a burr under your saddle, too.”

  “Is he going to go to prison for attempted murder?” Wolfe asked.

  “No. We, the CIA, had a brief conversation with the St. Johns County DA’s office. They will transfer Fulton here to the VA Hospital until his delusions are under control. Then he’ll go home. We compensated the court reporter, too. We’ll probably never know what he was thinking when he attacked her. His mind is full of conspiracies. We’re so lucky that he didn’t hurt her seriously. Same with you and Kayla Anne.”

  Emotionally drained, Wolfe put his hand on his friend’s knee. “I’m sorry about your mother. And father, of course. And not knowing about you, too, I guess,” he said.

  “They both knew I was back. We’d get together, far from Washington, occasionally. The hardest part for them was not letting anyone else know. Tammy and Yaz did well leading you away from me, but you were too persistent.”

  “So this is your last day on the job,” Wolfe said. Out of questions, he stood. “I guess I’ll be on my way. D
o I need an escort out? I suppose I’ll stop by your sister’s house and say good-bye.”

  Byrnes stood. He shook Wolfe’s hand, and then pulled his friend close in a hug. “Narang’s outside the door. He’ll see you out. In fact, he’ll drive you to the cemetery to get your car. Thanks, Addy. You are a real friend. I’ll be at my sister’s this evening with my family. By the way, so will your family. The CIA put Jennifer, Junior, and Kayla Anne on a chartered aircraft from Jacksonville about two hours ago. They will arrive about 4:00 p.m. at Reagan National. You may as well plan on spending the weekend here with us. We have a lot more catching up to do.”

  The End

  Epilogue

  In my humble opinion, the Vietnam War was as unnecessary as it was inevitable, given: European colonial competition, World War One, Bolshevik Revolution, Treaty of Versailles, League of Nations, and Ho Chi Minh’s failed attempt to extract his people from French colonial rule in the 1920s. Both the United States and Vietnam had fought against the Japanese, and were and are wary of the Chinese. At times we have been allies. Had President Roosevelt or President Truman persuaded the French and other European countries to give up their colonies peacefully after WWII, the series of wars in Indochina might never have taken place.

  Millions of people died in the Indochinese wars to end colonial rule. Many were combatants. Many more were innocent civilians caught in a struggle between ideals.

  The American-Vietnam War could have ended sooner, could have ended with better results for both the Americans and the Vietnamese people. North Vietnam might have benefited from losing the war. Ask Japan and Germany about that. Their quick recoveries only happened because the USSR existed and the USA feared it more than it feared its WWII enemies. Nation building is not usually an American specialty. See Iraq and Afghanistan for examples.

  The North Vietnamese won. They struggled from 1940 until 1975 to become an independent country, ruled by Vietnamese only. They fought successfully against Vichy France, Japan, the Republic of France, and the United States. By all accounts, their success seems to have been a disaster. Communist rule over the south has cost at least one million more lives.