Vietnam Spook Show (1989)

Wayne Care's novel was published by Ballantine's Ivy Books in 1989; its cover announces a story the National Security Agency allows to be told. Craig Nostrum, a petty officer third class, studies Vietnamese in Monterey and then flies on reconnaissance aircraft, transcribing what he hears into a tape recorder; the author's note says the book is fiction, though sometimes it feels just as it was. (Open Library)

Watches

Timex (unidentified model): After a night with Lydia, a divorcee he met singing at a Monterey piano bar, Craig wakes alone at the San Carlos Hotel and finds a Timex with a black leather band on the pillow; he straps it on, wonders idly whether she carries them in bulk, and sets the time (p. 18). On a mission he glances at the luminous dial of his cheap Timex at twenty-two hundred hours, just before a MiG comes up on the scopes (p. 115), and later reads it at two o'clock over a cold can of stew (p. 197). The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: There was a watch on the pillow, a Timex with a black leather band. Craig picked it up, strapped it on his wrist, and wondered idly if she always carried them with her (Wayne Care, Vietnam Spook Show, scan cataloged as Ivy Books (Ballantine), 1989, p. 18; Internet Archive scan OCR)