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had hit my Okinawa base thirty-six hours earlier, requesting
the services of AN ARTIST/VALIDATOR [FORGER] ON-SITE IN VI-
ENTIANE SOONEST.
As Mark, the case officer who had sent the cable, drove me
from the airport to this villa along a circuitous route, he briefed
me on the urgent job I faced.
We ve got one day max to complete some illicit altera-
tions to papers and diaries, he said, then added details of
what must have been one of the most convoluted operations
of the endless war in Southeast Asia.
Several weeks earlier, the local CIA station had received
word that two members of an Asian Communist party would
enter Vientiane en
THE MASTER OF DISGUISE / 103
route to Hanoi to help prepare evidence of American atrocit-
ies and war crimes. They were scheduled to present this pro-
paganda at the dubious international war crimes trial in
Stockholm, convened by Lord Bertrand Russell, the elderly
British pacifist well known for his naive view of Communist
intentions in the world. The station had discovered that their
travel itinerary included arrival and departure stops in
Bangkok and Vientiane.
The Royal Thai and Royal Lao governments were our allies
in suppressing the Communist insurgencies in their countries,
but none of our liaison contacts among the local customs or
immigration officials felt they could deny the Asian Commun-
ists passage through their airports en route to Hanoi. Upon
arriving in Vientiane two weeks earlier, the two men had been
placed in a modest hotel near the river, courtesy of the North
Vietnamese embassy, while they waited for the Aeroflot plane
to Hanoi the next day.
Since the Station had orders to deflect them from their mis-
sion and the local authorities would not cooperate, Mark and
his fellow case officers took matters into their own hands.
When the Communists left their hotel for dinner that evening
the local TOPS officer helped the case officers enter their rooms
and plant what he called compromising materials in the
men s luggage. He hoped Lao Customs at the airport would
find the incriminating documents in the morning and deplane
the men, cancel their transit visas, and send them back to
Bangkok.
Unfortunately the Lao officials were too polite to ask the
men to open their bags, and they departed safely for Hanoi.
The two Communists returned ten days later and were
booked on a flight to Bangkok the next afternoon. The challenge
now facing the Station was to capture the questionable evidence
they would take to Stockholm. The Station had already alerted
a small team of local young people known as the Flying Squad
to conduct surveillance on them and
104 / ANTONIO J. MENDEZWITH MALCOLM MCCONNELL
snatch the evidence, reporting that the two men always carried
a denim shoulder bag. Sure enough, a quick but thorough
search of their room revealed that the evidence must have been
in the bag, so Mark ordered the Flying Squad to seize it. That
evening, as the Communists strolled down to a riverfront cafe,
two Squad members coasted by on a Honda motorbike. One
of them jumped off, grabbed the bag, and leaped back onto
the bike. They roared away, and had almost turned a corner
when one of the Communists shouted, Stop, thief!
A Royal Lao Army lieutenant came to the rescue, knocking
down the Flying Squad members, and retrieving the bag, which
he proudly returned to the grateful Communists. Our boys
escaped in the confusion, but the Communists still had their
precious evidence.
Mark had a fallback plan. He managed to cancel the Com-
munists airline reservations and purchase every seat on all
the commercial flights leaving Vientiane for Bangkok in the
next week. But this proved futile as well. The North Vietnamese
embassy then arranged for the Communists to take the ferry
across the Mekong to Nong Khai and travel on the overnight
train to Bangkok. Resourceful as ever, Mark turned to the next
contingency plan, buying train tickets for the Flying Squad
members in a last-ditch effort to snatch the bag. Simultan-
eously, the Station implored its Thai contacts to have their
customs authorities confiscate the two Communists luggage
long enough for us to examine it. Our officers explained that
the men were Communist spies conducting espionage opera-
tions in Thailand, and we would provide solid evidence. Our
claim seemed convincing to the Thais, who were embroiled in
a violent Communist insurgency in their northeastern hinter-
land. They promptly placed the two men under house arrest
and allowed Mark s team to search their luggage, giving us
only twenty-four hours out of fear of retaliation from the men s
government.
THE MASTER OF DISGUISE / 105
What Mark discovered made everything worthwhile. The
materials included a can of 16mm filmed statements from
captured American pilots. These prisoners had been tortured
into making false confessions of school and hospital bombings,
as well as other grotesque offenses. There were also carefully
prepared documents proving that the United States was
engaged in genocide against Socialist Vietnam, while using
defoliants and other forms of chemical warfare to destroy farms
in the Red River Valley.
It was at this point that Mark decided to send the IMMEDIATE
cable to my base.
I THINK HERE he is drunk, the young woman said, pointing
delicately at the diary page. See how the characters become
twisted.
I rocked back in my chair, pivoting on my elbows, and eased
the tension of the forger s bridge. I capped my fountain pen
and laid it aside to knead the muscles of my neck. Even though
I couldn t read the words, I saw at once that she had detected
a subtle point we had both missed during the long rehearsals
that morning as we prepared our entries. Now we had to create
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