Operation four rings, p.1
Operation Four Rings, page 1
Operation Four Rings
JP Cross
Monsoon Books
Burrough on the Hill
Published in 2021
by Monsoon Books Ltd
www.monsoonbooks.co.uk
No.1 The Lodge, Burrough Court,
Burrough on the Hill, Leics. LE14 2QS, UK
ISBN (paperback): 9781912049509
ISBN (ebook): 9781912049516
Copyright©JP Cross, 2021
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover design by Cover Kitchen.
Contents
Praise
Preface
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Epilogue
About the Author
Other Books by the Author
Praise
‘Nobody in the world is better qualified to tell this story of the Gurkhas’ deadly jungle battles against Communist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s. Cross spins his tale with the eye of incomparable experience.’ John le Carré, on Operation Janus
‘… a gripping adventure story … learn the ins and outs of jungle warfare from a true expert’ The Oldie, on Operation Janus
Operation Black Rose
Operation Janus
Operation Blind Spot
Operation Stealth
Operation Four Rings
Preface
From pre-war days the Vietnamese Communists had wanted to emulate the French and take over, by influence if not by government, both Laos and Cambodia. Ruthlessly continuing their way soon after the end of World War Two, they were secretly countered by four dedicated Lao ‘moles’, all given a special ring, who tried to thwart these aims as well as avenge their parents’ killing. A Thai secret agent of the Vietnamese actively tried to thwart them.
After being commissioned into the Gurkhas during World War Two Jason Rance unwittingly became the target to be killed a number of times. Most unusually his enemies chose a codeword for their operations that were also chosen by Jason’s ‘home team’. In his twenties it was Operation Black Rose mostly in India and Burma, in his thirties Operation Janus and Operation Red Tidings in Malaya, in his forties Operation Blind Spot in Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo.
In his fifties he was the last Commandant of the British Army’s Jungle Warfare School near Johor Bahru in Peninsular Malaysia. In April 1972, during the last ever jungle warfare course comprising both Thai and Vietnamese students, the Thai Guiding Officer was the secret agent and the Vietnamese Guiding Officer one of the ‘moles’.
The Commandant was unwittingly dragged into their quarrel and the ‘mole’ gave him his ring for saving him from being killed by the Thai.
Rance was then posted to Laos as the Defence Attaché and even before he left England was a target of the Soviet KGB. As he had had Lao lessons with the King’s niece when still in London, it was thought there was a very slim, one-off chance of stealthily persuading the uncrowned King of Laos to be crowned. It was even given its own codeword, Operation Stealth.
At the same time the Vietnamese Communists felt they had a good chance of taking over the country, slowly and stealthily, so they gave their proceedings a similar name, Operation Stealth.
Colonel Rance was made known to the King when the new ambassador presented his credentials and, by that time, he had met two of the four moles.
The Provisional Government of National Union in Laos was announced on 19 September 1973 and on 12 October London heavily ordained that any contact that Rance might make with the King would only be ceremonial, according to protocol if at all, so Operation Stealth became a dead letter. In its stead the General in MOD responsible for planning a continuation of Rance’s quest, to be named Operation Four Rings, mandated that any contacts the secret world had for contact with any of the ‘moles’, would only be based using the Defence Attaché ‘unconsciously’, within the bounds of official constraints.
1
January-February 1974: Northwest Laos: The pornographic film flickered on the bare end wall of the mess room in an expanded United States Army Type C Special Forces camp at Xieng Lom in northwest Laos. As a particularly scabrous scene came to an erotic climax, the young Lao Captain sitting on the right of the British Defence Attaché, Colonel Jason Rance, could contain himself no longer. He half turned, squeezed the Englishman’s knee and moaned. Rance recoiled in revulsion, hating to be touched. Also at the show were a Lao Staff Colonel, there for protocol reasons, selected officers from the five Lao Irregular and the two Thai Unity Force of the Thai secret army battalions under training and, unexpectedly, an excellent English-speaking Thai Captain – ‘Call me Charlie,’ he had said to Rance when introduced – the British Embassy Beaver aircraft pilot, Major Anthony Crosland, and, of course, the American host.
Colonel Rance had arrived mid-afternoon and had had a session with both Lao officers in their part of the camp. He had found the Colonel to be burnt out – used to be a ball of fire but the fire has burnt out and left the balls so we call him Clinker Bill was his private comment – so he had decided to try and work on the English-speaking Thai Captain, Charlie, hence getting a seat next to him at the appallingly bad film show. In any case, not to have attended would have been a grave breach of etiquette.
The meal earlier on had been a convivial affair, unusual in that camp which otherwise was a lonely place for the sole American, Tom Higgins, the young, Thai-speaking CIA contract Case Officer. Having had prior warning of his visitors, he had decided to throw a party and had ordered a turkey and some wine from his base in Udorn, in Thailand. The double X film, with the unedifying title of ‘Fay and Gay’, was a bonus. Tom Higgins had as an unquenchable an appetite for the salacious as had any woman-starved member of the forces in his camp.
Even after the ceasefire had been signed on 23 February 1973 the war had grumbled on in the rest of Laos, indeed in the rest of Indo-China, sometimes dying down as the Communists manoeuvred for tactical advantage and occasionally flaring up as they gobbled up more real estate before the other side could react. However, where the camp was, not far from the Golden Triangle, it was quiet. Calm, however, was illusory: to the north flowed the brown-watered Mekong, the property of the Pathet Lao for a long stretch. Away to the northwest was Route 46, off limits because it was secretly occupied by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
Frequently the area was clouded over. Fly above the weather and risk getting into Burmese airspace: fly under it, dodging the mountain peaks, and risk being a target for hostile ground forces. Fly direct from Vientiane and over Thai airspace, even with clearance, and the T-28s of the Royal Thai Air Force on anti-guerrilla patrols were trigger-happily eager to take on something unarmed and slower than themselves.
It was Anthony Crosland’s first flight along this testing corridor into Xieng Lom so he was both relieved and relaxed during the meal. Conversation was mostly in English, the wine making the Asians more fluent than normal – except for the Thai Captain whose English was superb in any event, having been fully educated in England. He had been introduced as Captain Xutiati Xuto, which had so utterly floored the British pilot, unused to the Lao and Thai tongue-twisting names, that they settled for his English nickname – Charlie. It was Charlie who sat on Rance’s left at the film show.
Rance, of course, had no idea that Lieutenant General Sir David Law, KCB, CBE, DSO, MC, Director of Military Intelligence, was Charlie’s foster father. Charlie had never intruded into his foster father’s official life. Never, that is, till recently. Even before the heart-searching that went on in the arcane counsels of the shadowy intelligence world after the abortive meeting of the previous 12 October that prevented Rance from being used operationally, even though he had stumbled on two of four ‘moles’, now known as the Four Rings, even though one of them, named Le Dâng Khoã, had given his ring to Jason in the final exercise of the Jungle Warfare course. The General’s covert plan, dubbed ‘Operation Four Rings’, was to be withheld from Rance for security reasons, meant he needed Rance to stay on in Vientiane after his original ‘end of tour’ date. So he had written to him, the burden of the letter being that they were having trouble in finding a suitable replacement for him. ‘Therefore I am asking the Military Secretary’s branch to consider your extension by at least eight months in the first instance. Think it over and let us know your answer, preferably within a month. It will also give you a chance to continue work on your almost impossible quest to get the king to announce his date for his coronation, through your Lao teacher, who is, I believe, the King’s niece and elder sister of your teacher in London. We were unduly dramatic in calling it “Operation Stealth”.’
Rance, not unhappy with the idea, recalled his driver Leuam’s words soon after he got to Vientiane. He had been most upset by a nasty trick the Popovs, as he privately dubbed all Russians, had tried to play on him on his first ever visit to their embassy. What was it? Yes, something about thirty-two months needed to placate his thirty-two body spirit phees. Almost as though he had known in advance! He had sent his reply by return – yes, he would stay on.
&nbs
‘Charlie, you are well on your way to becoming a success in your own particular line. I gather that the British are quietly popular with the Thai government although overshadowed at the present time by the Americans. English girls as wives of rich and influential Thais are not unheard of and are accepted in society. Thus your excellent English and your British connections are not a disadvantage.’
Charlie had made a noncommittal reply. This is not what the Old Man usually speaks about. What’s coming? He would not have to wait long to find out.
‘I have often wondered about the day your mother ran out into the road and my Jeep killed her so, by Thai law, made me your foster father. You can’t remember her. I never knew her. As for your real father, the only rumour I ever heard was that he’d been a soldier, taken his elder son somewhere to the northeast and had never returned. But to come back to us: our relationship is a special one. I have never tried to claim any allegiance from you over and above normal family connections. Tonight,’ and a harshness crept into his voice and a bitter look simmered in his eyes, ‘I am going to change that. I myself have no higher to go in this man’s army. You can still rise high in yours. But that is no use to you if your country is overtaken by events now simmering in Indo-China. I need help – your help – to contact certain people in Laos or for them to contact you. I warn you here and now that what I am asking may be dangerous. I am not asking you to divulge any state secrets but cooperation may be needed. Those bridges can be crossed later. What I really want to say is I can offer you a situation you can exploit, that, for reasons of British Government policy, I cannot process myself but, under certain circumstances, I can support – so can the SIS and, obviously, the CIA can be relied on, that is if we don’t touch their temporary contract men. If you want more, tell me. If you want no more, also tell me and we’ll both forget it.’
The Thai nodded his agreement. ‘Carry on, father. If it weren’t of paramount importance you wouldn’t be talking like this’
‘Right. I thank you most sincerely.’ The two men shook hands and regarded each other with affection and respect. ‘Listen to this: the man at the centre of this is a certain Colonel Jason Rance, now our Attaché to Laos …’
… now squirming, on Charlie’s right-hand side, as a particularly loathsome scene of a young boy fondling his elder sister’s breasts kept the rest of the audience riveted with further expectation.
As the Lao Captain’s attention was fully drawn to the film, now showing a scene of incest and sodomy taking place in a bath, Rance could see he would get nothing out of him. He made himself as comfortable as possible and shut his eyes. Scarcely had he done that when he heard a quiet, insistent voice in his left ear, ‘Colonel, Colonel.’ He turned towards the voice and there was Charlie looking at him intensely. ‘This is a bloody awful film but we can’t leave or our absence will be noted. Listen. If there is anything I can tell you about our secret army, for your ears only, please, as to source, anything at all, past, present or future, ask me now and I’ll tell you what I can.’
Rance could scarcely credit what he heard. For months he had waited, wondering how to penetrate this particular organisation. The Thais were naturally always silent about their secret Unity Forces, the faked documentation, the volunteers with altered names and their dependence on the Americans. And yet, here was someone he did not know offering it to him, unasked for, on a plate. Suspiciously he asked, ‘How come you trust me enough to offer this to me?’
‘Don’t underestimate yourself, Colonel. Your reputation among some of the people I deal with is that you must have three eyes to cope with all you see. No confidence that you have been given has ever come to the ears of another. Just take it that I am ready and willing to talk – nor am I asking for anything in return.’
Before Rance had a chance of replying the reel came to an end and the lights were turned on. He glanced at Charlie: Who does he remind me of? ‘Pretty good, eh?’ asked Tom Higgins to everyone in general. ‘Di ti sut loeui’ – the best there is, and set about changing the reel. Lights were switched off and the dreadful movie continued.
Rance turned to Charlie, having made up his mind to squeeze this unexpected lemon as dry as he could. ‘Tell me about your relations with General Vang Pao in Military Region 2.’
Charlie was scathing about the setup. ‘In MR 2 it’s all right for our artillerymen but hard on our infantry deployed away from base on the hill tops. The General pinches our supply planes when we’re short of rations to fly girls into that enclave at Bouam Long, know which I mean?’
‘Yes, I do.’ He hadn’t been there yet but he was determined to get there. An enclave, halfway between Luang Prabang, the royal capital, and Sam Neua, the Lao Patriotic Front capital, that was, in effect, a group of fortified Meo villages, above Ban Ban on Route 6. Ban Ban, a strange-sounding name, meant, he knew, ‘Home Village’.
They continued talking intermittently until there was another pause as the last reel was made ready. When once again their voices would be drowned by the sound track, Charlie said, ‘You are obviously puzzled by my openness. This is to your credit. I expected it. You may report what I have told you to your Defence Intelligence – don’t be surprised! I know your terminology but, once again, please don’t use my name. When you get back to Vientiane, write a private letter to General Sir David Law. In it say you’ve met Charlie and have had a chat but you wish to check on his credentials. Just that. Nothing more. Then sit back and await the answer. It will be positive. After that, put me out of your mind until sometime in the future when we’ll meet again. I’ll make the running, not you. You can get hold of me only through Gordon Parks – again don’t be surprised I know who your intelligence man is. Don’t use my name. Let our association be code-named “Perseverance”. Do you know the Thai for that? It is an easy word – Mana. And the omens are good: your name is the same without the Jason – Percival, shortened to Percy Vere Rance: same difference!’
On hearing the word Mana, Jason’s mind flashed back to when he was commanding the last ever two jungle courses, one for the Royal Thai Army and the other for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, ARVN, at the Jungle Warfare School in Malaysia. The ‘exercise-enemy’ Gurkhas had been withdrawn and he had had to use Thais v Viets and Viets v Thais. The Guiding Officer of the Thais, Major Mana Varamit and that of the Viets, Major Le Dâng Khoã, had had a fight, which he had managed to settle. Almost as a reward, the Vietnamese Major had given him a ring which, he had eventually found out, belonged to one of the yet to be traced four ‘moles’, almost, working in the Communist cause. Later, even before he had taken over as attaché, he had met one of his ex-Thai students, now in the Thai secret army, at MR 2 HQ who had told him that Major Mana Varamit, calling himself Chok Di, had just left to attack a North Vietnamese Army position.
What Rance did not then know was that another ‘ring’, Tâ Tran Quán, working with the NVA, was wounded by Mana as he tried to kill him on defecting to the NVA. Mana was wounded in the head and Tâ Tran Quán was also wounded. He had taken off his ring before being captured by the Thai secret army and swallowed it to hide it. What he had unexpectedly found out the first time he had visited the LPF HQ was that their latest arrival from the Communist HQ in Sam Neua in northeast Lao, was also a ring wearer. His name was Bounphong Sunthorn; Jason and Gordon Parks knew him as Ring B. Jason had, in fact, met two of the four.
