Free Loose Cannon: The Tom Kelly Novels by David Drake

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