Free The Case Officer by F. W. Rustmann

ceremony down
at The Farm. The incident had taken place during Rothmann’s first overseas tour
in Saigon at the height of the Vietnam conflict.
     
    Chapter Twenty
     
    H e had recruited a young South
Vietnamese army captain who was a genuine war hero, with three decorations for valor.
His cryptonym was TURAP/1.
    Rothmann had met TURAP for the
first time at the Third Field hospital in Saigon, where TURAP was recovering
from his eighth war injury, and there he recruited TURAP to undertake a
clandestine mission to North Vietnam. The mission required TURAP to appear to
desert from the South Vietnamese Army, the ARVN, hire a body smuggler to reach
Cambodia, defect to the North Vietnamese at their embassy in Phnom Penh, and
then to make his way into North Vietnam, where he was to organize a clandestine
resistance force of his countrymen and communicate information out of the
country to a letter drop in Hong Kong.
    The first part of the operation
went according to plan. TURAP disappeared, was listed as a deserter, spent two
months in a Saigon safehouse learning clandestine communications skills, and
reached Cambodia.
    After that the operation began to
unravel.
    The Hong Kong-based clandestine
support mechanism set up to fund agents like TURAP broke down due to a personal
squabble between the chiefs of the Saigon and Hong Kong stations. TURAP, having
run out of money, was arrested for vagrancy in the Cambodian capital.
    Rothmann presented an alternate
plan of funding to the Saigon station chief, a plan the COS endorsed. The Chief
of Station forwarded it for approval. But Headquarters turned the plan down
cold. They felt that TURAP’s appearing penniless only made his cover story more
believable.
    Rothmann was livid but could do
nothing to change it.
    Three weeks after Rothmann had
broadcast a coded message to TURAP telling him that more money would not be
forthcoming, he received a letter with a coded message from TURAP. The message
said that he was going to cache his commo equipment and try to infiltrate a
Viet Cong unit to get to North Vietnam and fulfill his mission.
    The hapless agent had no way of
knowing that swarms of giant B-52 fortresses would soon be running saturation
bombing missions all along the Cambodian border on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The
CIA never heard from TURAP again, and Rothmann never got over the guilt he
felt.  “I lost my cherry on that one,” Rothmann had commented.
    And MacMurphy was soon going to
experience the same emotions. Headquarters was about to ruin Huang just as they
had callously cast off TURAP. He knew this with a certainty that bordered on
premonition.
     
    Chapter Twenty-One
     
    M acMurphy stood alone at the
balcony railing, deep in thoughts that were far from pleasant – TURAP, and what
Rothmann had inadvertently done to him. Huang, and what Mac was unwillingly
about to do to him. Collateral damage in the ongoing machinations that were an
inevitable part of a case officer’s life, whether in war or in peacetime.
    Now the unnaturally bright moon
felt like a sharply focused spotlight, singling him out, making him the focal
point of an unseen audience’s attention. It was a decidedly uncomfortable
feeling. Mac, deep in thought, didn’t hear Huang come up behind him. He was
unaware of his friend till Huang poked him in the ribs with an index finger,
saying, “You’re under arrest!”
    Mac only partially controlled his
reaction. His body tensed noticeably as the finger and the words found their
mark. “Damn, you scared me! How are you, Tsung-yao?”
    “Not too bad for an old man,”
responded the tall Chinese. His near flawless idiomatic English had been
polished to near perfection during his first overseas tour in Houston where he
had immersed himself in the American way of life. “And you?”
    “Can’t complain…nobody listens if
I do.” Mac smiled warmly at his friend.
    “I cannot imagine you as a complainer,
Mac,” Huang laughed.
    “I hear you’ve been pretty active
on