begins in 1953, with the assignment of two unlikely heroes to investigate an accusation made by the French governors of Indo-China that an American agency had been shipping arms to the anti-French guerrillas. But the investigation transcends into a quest that includes a foundation for all religious thought and a basis for all human action.
The erratic investigation expands across three continents and touches on two separate wars over a period of four years, unraveling a CIA-NSC debacle, which in many ways is reminiscent of the Iran-Contra situation, except on a hugely more pivotal scale. The plot outlines the opposition of the United States to the re-establishment of the French colonial empire, and the results lead to some rather wild questions about our early activities in that part of the world.
G-2 does not really intend for these men to discover anything, but they pick the wrong people for this purpose. Sergeant Marion Ramirez Apollo, ex-street fighter and the product of a one-night romance between a married Scottish physics professor and a Mexican-American waitress, is assigned because of his familiarity with the Kumsong region of Korea, where the investigation begins. The lieutenant who accompanies him is the sergeant's opposite: Kim Chau Dao comes from the landlord class in Indo-China and goes along because his father, the Defense Minister under the emperor Bao Dai, is the official who required the investigation.
The underlying quest arises from the teachings of Chau's sister, Dao My Linh, a student priest of a Taoist/Buddhist sect of Southeast Asia, the Cao. When assaults by the arms dealers and pressure from the Army begin, this philosophy, the love that develops between her and the Apollo, and the fatal sacrifice of Dao himself, all force Apollo toward a possibly fatal decision. He must stand by himself, even against those who command him, based on this new concept of purpose and sacrifice.
Edward Barr Robinson, son of Scots immigrants, began writing during his high school years in Glendale, California, eventually receiving his master's degree in journalism from UCLA. At the university, he was editor-in-chief of both the campus newspaper and magazine, then took a thirty-year break to obtain another master's degree in business and become a successful shopping center developer.
However, the background materials for THE GODHEAD were accumulating during that thirty-year period. Early on, he was drafted into the Army and trained for 18 months in the Ryukyu Islands with the 75th, formerly the 1075th, Regimental Combat Team--the "Merrill's Marauders." This RCT was apparently being jungle-trained as a possible backup to the French in their Indo-China war in 1954, and the Marauders were in fact flown out of Kadena Airport on Okinawa for Vietnam during the Dien Bien Phu battle, M-1's between their knees. They were turned around and returned in mid-flight, which initiated the author's curiosity about the strange twists that America's national policies were taking during the early days of Vietnam. This, in turn resulted in the writing of THE GODHEAD.
Much more than just a historical glimpse of the pre-Vietnam War era, THE GODHEAD to a greater extent reflects Mr. Robinson's life-long fascination with physics and philosophy, specifically with the disciplines of quantum mechanics and eastern mysticism He had begun, early on, to notice the eerily neat parallels between the two subjects, which have been buttressed in publications like THE TAO OF PHYSICS by Fritjof Capra and THE DANCING WU LI MASTERS by Gary Zukav. But in THE GODHEAD the author has attempted to extend these parallels into a basic foundation for all human action, as reflected in the thoughts, actions, and developments of the novel's protagonist.
Mr. Robinson is well qualified to make such an attempt. Aside from his professional credentials, he is also a lifetime member of Mensa and, on another level, a member of the Triple Nine Society, which limits its membership only to those in the 99.9th percentile, requiring a minimum IQ level of 149. And the challenge of incorporating his observations in a novel like THE GODHEAD has always been one of his lifetime goals.
The author now lives on Lido Isle in Newport Beach, California, with his wife Jean.
This, then, will be your touchstone, and this will be your light . . .
Dao Chien Thieu, trying to remember the words, knew this would be the last incantation of his life, such a bewildering thought. Yet the thoughts, the words, stuck in the tight place in his throat, for he asked this grace from the searchlight of a French boat and not from the light of the Cao Dai, not from Eye of God.
"Glorious light," Chien whispered, allowing this deception, squeezing the words past the tightness in his throat, "let your prophecy and guidance be fulfilled in me, please, on this night."
The French LSSL patrol boat, the Arquebuse, had been scanning Chien's freighter, Erroa, from the moment she secured berth in the harbor of Da Nang. Their discovery was so unexpected, so completely unexpected here. He thought the Erroa would easily pass through Da Nang Bay unseen, only one more freighter harbored within the veil of rains--how could she be detected in these monsoons? The rains in the early summer of 1953 were the second heaviest since the keeping of records, and yet here they were, the French and their gun ship.
Dao Chien had already dismissed his men and told them to scatter inland after hearing the first hint in the transmission from the Arquebuse that the French had identified the Erroa as a munitions carrier. The French boat carried three-inch cannon and ran at twenty-two knots and carried sixty troops, and the Erroa had no chance against a gun ship like the Arquebuse.
Dao Chien stepped down the ladder of Erroa’s midships hatchway and shuffled back to the unlit aft-cargo where the more volatile munitions were secured, where the fume of bilge-diesel lingered and its taste clung to the air, and it stunk heavy in his mouth. A brown canvass shroud covered the container of plastique but he couldn't risk using the overhead lamp to find it. The French would notice that. Instead he used the emergency wall-flashlight to locate the pen-detonators, still in their plain wooden carton, snugged between the containers of 81mm mortar rounds and the anti-personnel mines, packed in calcium silicate crystals and stowed atop the center container marked in English: "Caution--Granular PETN--Plastic Military Explosive."
He heard the French commandant calling from the gangway. The soldiers, noisily wharfside now, were boarding the Erroa off the pier ramp, rattling along the iron railings, deploying down the main deck, down toward the companionways, down into the holds and lower cabins, and Chien fumbled to get the timer set but his fingers wouldn't hold steady. He put his hands under his arms and squeezed hard, and then groped the indicator to the fifteen minute mark and stuck the ends of the circuit wire into the clips on the detonator, which would give him enough time to get the ship's manifest and bills of lading. If he could get by the soldiers. . . . Little hope of that.
If he couldn't, he would stay in the navigation room, shut its armored door and let the documents be destroyed with him, because their destruction was necessary. Dao Chien Thieu knew at least this: There was no choice.
French soldiers were running through most of the corridors but Dao Chien reached the steel-enclosed room next to the navigator's quarters without being seen, and had to gasp for breath as he did so, before he stepped inside. This was young men's work and he realized on this day of all days that he was certainly no longer young, and he rested his shoulder against the bulkhead wall before he saw the officer, and heard the words, obliquely, "God in heaven . . . Dao Chien?"
A French officer stared at him from behind the navigation table. "Dao Chien Thieu?" Major de Larocque said again, nearly dropping the pistol as he re-gripped the sweaty handle. The barrel banged against the steel table. "God, the brother of the Minister of Defense is behind these shipments?"
"Major de Larocque . . . "
"Only last week we had dinner with your brother, for God's sake. Now I find you here?"
Chien tried to think but was too tired, too isolated to think of a believable lie. He lowered his head, reached his hands out to either side, surrendered to his world of lies. "I carry no weapons, Major de Larocque."
"God in heaven, the Minister of Defense had reports that some American was supplying the communists." The major began to shake his head. "Now look, we find his damned brother here." Major de Larocque thumped a stack of documents on the navigation table and stared down and continued shaking his head.
Dao Chien felt the beginning of a cramp burning his shoulders but he kept his arms out, and the quickness of the pain told him again of his frightful oldness. "An American supplying the rebels against the French occupation? Major . . . if my brother thought the Americans were taking sides with the Viet Minh," Dao Chien swallowed painfully, "he would join the rebels himself. But I don't really know who sends these weapons."
De Larocque's eyes, narrow, sitting tightly over his long nose and weak chin, made the 40-year old officer look too much like an old ferret, thought Dao Chien. Not at all like the tall mustachioed regimental officers of the Tiraillers Tonkinois who once visited his family plantations in Tan Am. "Your brother is a big admirer of the Americans, monsieur . . . " Without moving his pistol the major began gathering the papers with his other hand. "But even they would never, never persuade him to supply the Viet Minh guerrillas against the French, if such a thing were even thinkable. . . . "
Dao Chien closed his eyes and blocked out the words. He remembered the metal door, still open behind him, a step away, and wondered if he could take this final step.
"You are thinking, perhaps, of trying an escape, Deputy Minister," said the Major, seeing Chien look toward the door. "Please do not. Please. You would not succeed. I have no desire to hurt you."
A squad of footsteps went by outside, along the passageway. A thin voice shooing men into the cabins and sleeping quarters of the ship's crew. The door swung in as a disheveled young lieutenant stepped through and saw Dao Chien and stopped, and fingered the flap of his holster. "Everything all right here, Major?"
"Everything's all right, Lieutenant Aumont." Major de Larocque waggled a hand toward the lieutenant's holster. "I think you know Deputy Minister Dao. . . . What about the weapons?"
"Sir, the boat is loaded." Lieutenant Aumont gave up trying to unsnap his side arm. "We can start an inventory-"
"-No. No inventory right now," said Major de Larocque. "Secure and post watches. Get those worthless Headquarters people to take inventory."
"I'll do that, sir." The lieutenant, seeing that Dao Chien presented no threat, saluted himself out, but Chien felt his chest cinch up at the sight of the young officer. At least a company of men remained on or around the Erroa now, and there was the patrol boat alongside . . . too many men. He never thought of himself as a field soldier and he did not want to die like this, with the killing of so many men, but he needed to keep the documents inside this room forever.
