Free Vietnam II: A War Novel Episode 1 (V2) by C.R. Ryder

Operations Officer Zachary Drake
    Central Intelligence Agency
    Udon Thani, Thailand
     
    The year was 1990.  There was war in the Middle East, an epidemic in Africa, humidity in Thailand and The Cat in the Hat was dead.  His package, the package that changed the world, rested in a post office in Mueang Udon Thani near the Thai border with Vietnam.
    It had really started with the Cat.  He, and that box of his, was the genesis of the public outcry, the embargo and the war.  He had been our guy in Hanoi for five years.  His name was Nguyen Van Lam and he was a Vietnamese General that we had turned as a major right after the Fall of Saigon.  He met with European arms dealers twice a year in Udon Thani for the Vietnamese government.  While he was there he dropped off a package of intel for the US.
    It was all soft intel and Hanoi was probably behind everything he fed us, but everyone was happy with the arrangement.  That was how the game was played.  We knew they knew and they knew we knew and everyone really didn’t know anything.  That was how Iraq invaded Kuwait the month before and no one really saw it coming.
    Things with the Cat had been pretty routine for fifteen years.  No muss no fuss.  An envelope full of intel for an envelope full of money.  Then around mid-August he called unexpectedly saying he wanted an unscheduled meet.  It was suspicious and it was odd.  Still American intelligence was prepared to be flexible.  Sometimes that’s how history is made.
    I went to meet him.  What choice did we have?
    The Cat used a cold drop using a post office box in a small post office in the agricultural district.  He normally left us an envelope full of documents.  Typically troop numbers and movements.  Sometimes some procurement information.  It was the kind of thing that we would be getting from their own computers in the next century, but it was 1990 and the only people on the internet were college kids. 
    I hit the ground a couple of days before the meet.  After getting comfortable in my hotel I checked the box, it was empty, and then had a few good meals while I waited for the Cat.  A day before the drop I contacted our guy in the PD here.  It was a habit I had gotten into when I was assigned to Western Europe.  Sometimes shadow ops got a bright light shined on them and the first people with their hands on the flashlights were typically the cops.  Sure enough a corpse matching the Cat’s description was found in the Mekong River, near the Friendship Bridge, with his fingers and teeth missing. Whoever killed him didn’t even want his mother to identify him.  Unfortunate for the killer and good for me they missed a Laotian passport he’d sewn into his jacket.  The police hadn’t and now I knew the Cat had been assassinated.
    Whatever the Cat had planned on giving us it looked like he was wanting to go back to the states with it.  He wasn’t worth the bad press of a defection.  Nobody wanted to hear about Vietnam anymore.  We wouldn’t have taken him on his own even if he offered.  That meant if this thing was legit then he must have had something pretty noteworthy to share.  Valuable enough for someone to kill him for it. 
    I hoped the Cat was smart enough not to walk around with intel in his pocket.  Of course the information might have all been in his head, but I was hoping he had brought something hard.  If it wasn’t on him when he was murdered then it might be at the drop.  If anything could be salvaged from the whole mess it would be in that post office box in Udon or it was with him when they got him and long gone.
    After the cop shop I went back to my hotel and made a couple of phone calls back to the embassy, but got no clear directions.  My supervisor handed me a big basket of ‘it’s up to you’ which of course gave him complete deniability if I were the next one found dead with his fingers and teeth missing.
    I got lunch uptown and considered my options.  Nothing