Page 177 of Cry Havoc
“Things are always changing, Nick. What’s up?”
“The Soviets manipulated the situation.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tom, I’m sorry, Dvornikov is getting traded, but it’s not for our POWs in Siberia.”
“The hell he’s not! He told us the Soviets are taking American POWs from Vietnam to Siberia! He told us they have six there right now! Who knows how many more they could take from Hanoi. What the fuck’s going on, Nick?”
“The only people who know what he said in the cabin on that trawler are you, me, and Dvornikov.”
“And the Agency interrogators who have been grilling him the past few weeks.”
“I don’t know what he told them, but let’s assume it’s what he told us: that the Soviets are transporting POWs who are officially listed as Missing in Action to the USSR for interrogation. And let’s say that goes in a brief to the president, who then confronts Brezhnev. After Brezhnev denies it, then what?”
“Then we push them. We ask whatever spies we have in the USSR to get us proof. We go to war if we need to.”
“Tom, listen to yourself. The United States is not going to risk a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union over six guys, especially without direct proof.”
“Youlisten toyourself,Nick. We fucking owe it to them, to the guys who laid it all on the line, who came over here and trusted their elected representatives and commander in chief. We owe it to them and to their families to do whatever it takes to get them home.”
“I agree with you, but there is another variable at play.”
“What?”
“ThePueblo.”
“North Korea?”
“Yes.”
Tom took a breath and thought it through.
“They are offering us the crew of thePuebloif we look the other way on U.S. POWs in the Soviet Union, aren’t they?”
“That’s right. Now, I don’t know if not pressing the POW issue is a condition of a trade for the crew of thePueblo, but I can make assumptions.”
“How many crew members are they trading?”
“All eighty-two, plus the body of the sailor who was killed.”
“Eighty-two,” Tom whispered. “And it brings an end to thePueblocrisis.”
Serrano nodded.
“Where is he now?”
“Who?” Serrano asked.
“Dvornikov.”
“Not sure. Something this sensitive and high-priority is going to be kept extremely close hold. Probably the Philippines, possibly Japan or Mexico, anywhere other than U.S. soil. I’m sorry, Tom, but this is sometimes how the bureaucracy and politics work above the tactical level.”
“Yeah.”
“You can’t beat yourself up over any of this. Dvornikov told us that Ella knew he had security. She lied to us. That’s what got her killed.”
“I’ll keep telling myself that. And Eldridge?”
