A Matter of Honor

Chapter Ten

Captain Hays “Froggie” Jetter, a U.S. Army Intelligence officer stationed in Washington, D.C., sat at his desk in a small, overheated office and looked out at the snow swirling beyond his windows. Jetter wore a business suit and his section was quartered in an old government building which stored census records and a library of rare law books dealing with Civil War reparations legislation. The frosted glass office door was unmarked except for a single word in neat block capitals: PRIVATE.

Captain Jetter had just replayed for the fourth time the taped telephone conversation he’d monitored earlier that day between First Sergeant Karl Malleck at X-14th Headquarters in Chicago and a technical specialist at Records in Colorado. Like an expert reading a lie detector test, the captain listened carefully to everything Malleck said, trying to note hesitancy, blatancy, or an incriminating waver on given words, but the sergeant’s voice was casual and controlled, almost jocular. Jetter scrawled three words on a notepad and underlined them twice. Special Assignments Officer. In the U.S. Army, the captain knew, there was no such title.

It had been a failure to take action that first alerted Intelligence to ask for a tap on Malleck’s phone. Privates Cullen and Baggot, both wearing the uniform of the United States Army, had been killed weeks apart within a twenty block radius of the old Armory and within easy patrol or notification range of Malleck’s unit. Yet in each case it had been the Chicago police who had found the bodies, conducted preliminary investigation and notified the Army.

When the third soldier, Private Jones, was also found dead by civilian police only a few blocks out of the original perimeter, Intelligence asked for and got permission to put a tap on the Armory phones.

Somebody wasn’t doing his job right, Captain Jetter knew, and that usually meant that someone was concentrating on doing something wrong.

His mood was somber as he studied the glowering weather. It wasn’t the structure or concept of the American military complex that caused the problems. It was the human factor — greed, self-preferment, the Karl Mallecks of the world who spotted a chink in the system and like piranhas went for the smell of blood and profits.

It was fortunate for the Army, Jetter thought, that the majority of first sergeants were industrious, unimaginative and honest career men, efficient, loyal and good middle-level administrators. On a day-to-day level, peacetime or war, it was the top sergeants who ran the Army and within reasonable boundaries could run it as they pleased.

Every decade a bad apple got loose in the ranks. Jetter had been a junior officer, stationed in Vietnam, when the big PX embezzlement scandal broke there, and the press in Saigon got wind of the fraud almost before Intelligence did. A pair of top sergeants in charge of PX supply and procurement had been falsifying inventories and demanding kickbacks from Stateside suppliers and hundreds of thousands wound up in personal bank accounts. It was partly those sergeants, those corrupters, Captain Jetter thought sourly, who had made it impossible for the Army to win that war. Those larcenous first shirts had pulled their scam for years right under the eyes of Army Intelligence, only because they had the savvy and clout of top sergeants.

Captain Jetter collected his files on Karl Malleck (the Siegfreid Express was the operation’s code word) and tucked them into his briefcase. He pulled on an overcoat, worked a pair of rubbers over his L.L. Bean loafers and tied a wool muffler around his neck. The captain had been ordered to bring his files to Colonel Richard Benton’s home in Georgetown. “He’d like to see you around cocktails,” was the way his superior Major Staub had put it on the phone; around, not for cocktails. There was a difference.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon. Captain Jetter decided he had time to stop at the Adonis Spa for a workout, a sauna and rubdown before keeping his appointment with his superiors. He was thirty-seven years old, a seasoned professional in his trade, and an addict about physical fitness. He observed stringent rules about eating and drinking, favored dark suits with pinstripes, worked out three times a week in the gym, but still his physique and his prep school nickname stuck and rankled him.

Captain Jetter wouldn’t have minded being called “Froggie” if he’d been a star on the swimming or water polo teams at Choate, but he’d been called “Froggie” because his classmates decided he looked like a frog with his thick torso, short bull neck and protruding eyes. Only fastidious personal habits and grueling physical workouts controlled his self-consciousness and made the captain’s squat, powerful body acceptable to him.

“Anatomy is destiny...” That thought went through his mind for the thousandth time as he walked toward his Mercedes in the parking lot. Sigmund Freud had made that pronouncement and Jetter had read it somewhere.

But it was Lenin who knew that ultimate power rested in the control of the records, Jetter recalled as he put his briefcase into the trunk of his car, tucked it under a blanket, then turned the key in a custom lock. Never mind the generals at the barricades or the orator in the streets, it was the men who wrote the rules and kept the records who ultimately wrote history.

“Froggie” Jetter had read that somewhere, too, probably in college.

After his forty-five-minute workout, Jetter sat in the sauna with a towel around his waist. An attendant had sprinkled wintergreen scent on the hot stones and the room had the sticky, sanitized odor of a public lavatory. Jetter shifted to the top redwood shelf and hunched over in the misty heat, breathing in and out of his mouth.

He was puzzled by the sudden interest in this seemingly minor operation, a maverick sergeant abusing his privileges for unknown reasons. Until today, Intelligence’s surveillance had been routine and cursory, and the tap on Sergeant Malleck’s phone had netted them nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary. Yet almost immediately after he had messengered the tape request for the service records on one Durham Lasari, plus a call from a Chicago Tribune reporter named Caidin — after those routine memos had been sent to Major Staub, an aide from the major’s office had called Jetter and told him to hold for the major. It was then that he had been ordered to report to Colonel Benton’s home in Georgetown that evening.

A maid took Captain Jetter’s coat and muffler, and after he removed his wet rubbers showed him into a book-lined study with a coal fire in the grate. Major Staub was already there, standing by an antique table laden with an array of liquor bottles, a salver of crackers and a silver bowl of whipped cheese. He nodded at Jetter and then helped himself to the crackers and cheese.

Tall and softly padded, Staub was in uniform but the smart olive drab jacket only emphasized the swelling paunch, the rounded, unmilitary sag of his shoulders. In his late forties, Merrill Staub was balding, with patchy tufts of blond hair dotting his scalp. But his eyes were a direct, piercing blue and his air of disarray had a certain elegance about it, suggesting authority and a preoccupation with higher matters. Staub was unmarried, a dogged, tireless worker and destined, according to Pentagon rumors, to follow Colonel Benton to the top of Army Intelligence in a few years.

“You bring everything on Siegfried, Froggie?”

“Everything we have to date, sir.”

“Not quite,” Major Staub said. “I implemented your information and got a copy of that Lasari service record. Colorado photo-wired it about two hours ago and I had a memo sent to Colonel Benton at his request. He needed an immediate briefing.”

Major Staub studied a fleck of cracker that had dropped on the sleeve of his jacket, then flicked it off with a square fingernail. “For what it’s worth, Froggie,” he said, “Lasari’s about thirty-two now but he hasn’t been in the Army for about ten years or so. His file is open but inactive. He deserted, whereabouts unknown.”

A chunk of cannel coal cracked apart with a pop like a firecracker, sending a glowing cinder onto the hearth. Staub walked to the fireplace and kicked the burning coal back into place with the toe of his polished boot. Somewhere in the house a phone began to ring.

“This case is getting complicated,” the major said.

The study door opened and the colonel’s wife, a tall, pretty woman in a long dress, looked in on them, smiling. “Hello, Merrill, Froggie. My heavens, aren’t you drinking?”

“We’re fine, Ellie,” the major said, “just fine. Don’t you give us another thought.”

“Richard will be down soon,” Mrs. Benton said. “He’s struggling with studs or cufflinks, I expect. We’re dining at Admiral Wood’s and it’s black tie. Richard hates that. Excuse me, fellows, okay? My number two child is writing a piece on hospitals and she can’t spell ‘catheter’ or ‘cathartic’ or some such thing, and I’ve got to lend a hand.”

When she left Staub said sharply, “When you requested a tap on the X-14th, did you tell the FBI in Chicago why you wanted it?”

“No, I told AIC it was a random check.”

“Good. The fewer who need to know the better. In this instance, it’s imperative.”

“Major, can you tell me what your problem is?” Froggie Jetter asked. “We’ve been proceeding on the conjecture that a pair of high placed noncoms may be running a minimally profitable courier service between Germany and the United States. Petty thievery, industrial diamonds, perhaps — we don’t even know that for sure, but we conjecture. We’ve got nothing definitive yet, a tap on a wire but our man’s cautious. We’re waiting for a wrong move so we can nail him. That’s the way I see Siegfried. Has something come up that makes that evaluation nonoperative?”

“Yes,” Major Staub said. “The colonel was summoned to an emergency meeting with Senator Copeland this afternoon. Copeland was aware of certain events in Chicago and had some theories on the matter. That came as an unpleasant shock to the colonel. We think we’re monitoring a routine, low-grade racket and suddenly House Military Affairs works up its own position paper.”

“What’s Copeland got that we don’t have?”

Before Staub could answer, the door opened and Colonel Benton came into the study. The colonel was in a dinner jacket with black tie, the rosette of a military decoration gleaming from a silk-faced lapel. He was tall and lean, with thick, gray hair cut short and when he smiled, which was seldom, the effort tightened the muscles around his mouth and pulled and sharpened the angles of his square, aristocratic features. Colonel Benton was often remembered for the strange quality of his eyes. They were a flat, opaque brown; as though he was wearing dark, rimless glasses.

He was forty-two, third generation West Point, a member of the Army’s aristocracy, his roots deep in the South and linked by family and marriage to the closest and most influential branches of the military. His wife was wealthy. In Washington the Bentons lived with appropriate austerity, but the horse-breeding farm in Virginia was a showplace, the air-conditioned stables famous, as were the annual yearling sales.

The colonel poured himself a glass of dry vermouth, then stirred in cracked ice and a twist of lemon peel. “Froggie, are you up with us? How much has Merrill told you?” He drank quickly, then looked down at his half-empty glass.

“Only that Senator Copeland...”

“I’ll fill you in then,” he said briskly. The colonel’s voice was flat, uninflected but resonant, a voice accustomed to being listened to. “It was goddamn awkward to have Dexter Copeland tell me things I didn’t know about our ongoing investigations. But you know Copeland. He had to dump on me first with his lectures on the state of the union.” Benton began to speak in agitated, mimicking tones.

“... one million or more young Americans haven’t bothered to register for the draft. That’s one-sixth of the eligible service pool. They didn’t sign up and burn their draft cards, they just said, ‘Fuck off, Uncle Sam. We can’t be bothered.’ ” The Colonel let his voice return to normal.

“Then he tells me the Abrams ML-tank came in millions over budget and the fucker doesn’t work too well to boot, problems with treads and firing.

“And he did his bit about nuke silos in Utah and all those antisub peaceniks demonstrating along the coastline in Scotland. Finally he got around to Germany, which he wanted to talk about in the first place.

“Copeland is convinced that the Russians have enough firepower on their borders to lob rockets right into the chancellor’s office in Bonn.”

Colonel Benton walked to the table, put another splash of vermouth in his glass and then filled it with gin. He stirred the mixture absently with his little finger.

“His approach was oblique but the senator had called our meeting to ask me one all-important question. He wanted to know how in hell he could stay in office and get re-elected if Army Intelligence couldn’t clear up that problem percolating in Chicago.

“Dexter Copeland is from Illinois, you know,” the colonel went on. “He’s been in office for a long time — some voters think too damned long. So Copeland wants to hedge his bets guaranteeing all the votes he can get, and that includes every black vote from Cabrini Green down to South Cairo.”

Benton snapped a finger at Captain Jetter. “What are those names, Froggie?”

“Privates Cullen, Baggot, Jones—” The captain hastily opened his attaché case and glanced at a memo. “The last one was a Private Randolph Lewis.”

“Copeland had all those names,” Colonel Benton went on, “plus where, how and at what tick of the clock each man was killed. He got his information in a direct, private number phone call from one of his most important constituents, a voter he cannot afford to displease, the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

“Reverend Jackson told the Senator in no uncertain terms that four dead black brothers were four dead men too many. And since all of them were in uniform, supposedly fine young citizens in the service of their country, he wanted to know exactly what Senator Copeland was going to do about it.”

Captain Jetter stifled a pang of uneasiness as the colonel turned to look at him with a hard stare. “We’ve had no indication that the Reverend Jackson would involve himself,” Froggie Jetter said defensively, “and I can’t see why he should.”

“I do,” the colonel said. “My dear mother, God bless her southern soul, used to like to have me think when I was a boy that she knew everything I did, everything, good or bad. When she found me out on something I tried to hide, she’d say, ‘God can’t be everywhere, Richie. That’s why He invented mothers.’

“And that’s how I feel about the Reverend Jackson,” the colonel said. “God can’t be everywhere and that’s why He made the Jesse Jacksons of the world, to watch out after all the shat-upon brethren and take some of the load off our shoulders.”

The brief moment of softness left the colonel’s face. “I spared Senator Copeland that whimsy when he told me what else was on his mind. Copeland wouldn’t name his source, but I believe God and the Reverend Jackson know everything. The Senator said he had information that the rumor in Chicago, and particularly with the drug operators around black housing developments, is that the caper you’ve so humorously nicknamed Siegfried Express is not just a petty cash, small-time contraband operation, after all.

“What is coming in, and from sources outside the Syndicate, is pure white heroin, a high-grade, high-cost product. And because many of the customers for this trade and all four suspected couriers are black, Reverend Jackson wanted to know urgently just how the good senator was going to handle this malfeasance...

“Fortunately,” Colonel Benton said, “I had done my homework before the meeting and could convey the impression we were on top of this thing. I told Copeland we believed we could make a direct connection, that we had anticipated the next courier.

“With the materials received from Colorado, my staff had brought the Durham Lasari records up-to-date, so to speak. We knew he was born and enlisted in the North Carolina area, got most of his post-’Nam medical treatment at Fitzsimons in Denver and disappeared from the military in that area. I told all that to the senator.

“My side had attacked the obvious — the local phone directories. Lasari is not a common name, it turns out. There were two in Raleigh, North Carolina, both in the pizza business, no relations. A professor at the University of Colorado, in his fifties, not our man, and a Jane Lasari in Colorado Springs who drives a school bus. We ran a Motors check in each area, four Lasari registrations, no Durham.”

The colonel paced in front of the fireplace with short steps, the ice in his glass rattling as he walked. “Who else is currently interested in this Lasari? Sergeant Karl Malleck. So we try the Chicago phone books, Winnetka, Wilmette, Lake Forest, the suburbs. As I said, Lasari is not a common name. There’s not one listed in the Chicago directory or thereabouts. So we put a routine call into Motors in Springfield, and there’s our man.”

The colonel was suddenly thoughtful. “I didn’t mention this to Copeland; in fact, it didn’t occur to me at the time, but those Springfield records gave us more on Lasari than his car make and current address...”

“What is that, colonel?” Major Staub said.

“Well, he changed that registration legally only about four months ago,” the colonel said, “did the paperwork, sent a money order for eight dollars and had the ownership changed to Durham Lasari. Before that he used the name George Jackson.”

“After ten years he got cocky, never thought we’d still go looking for him, right?” Captain Jetter said.

“Perhaps,” the colonel said, “but you miss a subtle possibility, Froggie. The man decided to use his real identity, go on record, be himself again. I believe the deserter may have been thinking about turning himself in.”

The colonel stopped in front of the fireplace, his back to the flames. Two spots of color showed on his taut cheekbones and his dark eyes had an almost liquid intensity. “I wonder if Sergeant Malleck knew that,” he said thoughtfully.

“Is that implemental now, colonel?” Captain Jetter asked. “If we’ve found Lasari, we can assume Malleck found him, too, and means to use him. We give them twenty-four hours to make contact, then we move in and close down the operation, here and in Germany, arrange a few therapeutic courts-martial...”

Colonel Benton held up his hand. “Quite the contrary,” he said, “and both Senator Copeland and I agree on this.”

A light tap sounded on the door. “Just a minute, please,” the colonel called out. “Our mutual decision on this...”

The door opened and Ellie Benton smiled in at the men. “Excuse me, darling,” she said to her husband, “but Patty wants you to look at her essay before we go. And we should be leaving soon if we want to make the soup course...”

Something in the colonel’s face, a rigidity and then an involuntary spasm of anger, caused his wife’s smile to fade quickly. “It’s not all that important, Robert. I’ll just go ahead in my own car if you like.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Colonel Benton said and stepped over to close the door behind her.

“My apologies, gentlemen.” He paused and listened to the sound of the front door opening and closing, then resumed his stance in front of the fireplace. “Our mutual decision, Senator Copeland’s and mine, is to put a lid over the whole Siegfried operation, keep it covert and contained. We issue our own pragmatic sanction in this matter. May I summarize my comments to the senator?” Both junior officers nodded.

“Once again it’s crux time in international relations,” Colonel Benton said. “Our country needs and is determined to keep the loyalty and cooperation of our NATO allies, particularly in Germany. And we want to keep a friendly status quo for our specialists stationed in Turkey, Greece, Belgium, Italy, The Netherlands and Great Britain, a good part of the civilized world.

“We’ve had enough of rallies in The Hague and Berlin and Brussels demanding their governments banish nuclear weapons and troops from their soil. We’ve juggled German public opinion against the presence of troops in their country for more than three decades. The Greens, with their anti-Establishment, anti-American determinations, have already earned themselves a place in the Bonnstag with five percent of the vote. We’re damned lucky that the conservatives managed to push Chancellor Kohl into office. He’s our man. The Russians don’t like that, but we do.

“We win some and we lose some, but the senator and I agreed that this Siegfried thing is one goddamn caper we’re going to win. Right now our relationship with NATO and/or Germany is in harmonious but delicate balance. What do you think would happen to that relationship, and to the image of Godalmighty America if it became known that men in the United States Army, compatriots in uniform, were running drugs, pure white, between the United States and Germany?”

The colonel paused as the sound of his wife’s car sounded on the graveled driveway. “If a press story broke now, it would be an unmitigated disaster, that’s Dexter Copeland’s phrase for it. If we went public, the media would have a field day, the Army would be in deep trouble. It would be an international scandal, the kind of propaganda ammunition that could destroy our control of Europe, Germany — all of NATO.”

“So what do we do, colonel?” Merrill Staub said.

“We put a lid over the entire operation, as I said,” Colonel Benton explained. “My plan — outlined to Copeland — is this. Ostensibly we will do nothing, nothing at all. We’ll let the crooked bastards in this operation do our work for us. We’ll use Lasari, or rather, we’ll let Sergeant Malleck ‘use’ Lasari in whatever way he has planned. We monitor Lasari’s movements through regular Army channels, but we let Malleck bring in the contraband one more time and grab him with the goods on this end. We want the contraband, Malleck and any other man in U.S. uniform who’s in cahoots with him.

“We’re not looking for a cure for this cancer, we’re just going to excise the roots. The operation will be speedy, sanitary and silent. We’ll make the necessary military arrests, arrange for quick courts-martial and then throw away the key to whatever federal pen the bastards get sent to. It’s an Army problem and we’ll keep it that way.”

The mood had changed in the study. It was relaxed, touched with subtle triumph. The colonel pulled down his black tie, then tossed the dregs of his gin into the fireplace and built himself a new drink. The spurt of steam from the hot coals filled the study with the acrid smell of juniper berries.

“It’s what the senator and I agree is the best strategy,” he said. “Water under the bridge, what they don’t know won’t hurt them, business as usual, that sort of thing. We wash our own dirty linen and we do it in private.”

He gestured toward the table of liquors. “Major, Froggie, help yourselves. It’s way past ice time.”

Captain Jetter moved toward the bar but Major Staub stood quiet, his face taut with concentration. Then he said, “Colonel, about this Lasari... do you plan to inform him of the role he’s playing, the work he is doing for us, as you put it? Longevity doesn’t seem to be part of the plan for Malleck’s couriers. Shouldn’t we factor in that inevitability?”

“I didn’t bring that up with Copeland, of course,” Colonel Benton said, “but I gave it some private thought. The key word is expediency, major, expediency. ‘All for the greater good,’ as the old saying goes. Foreknowledge might cause the man to spook our operation, so we tell him nothing. And Durham Lasari is a deserter, remember that. I don’t see that we owe him much of anything.”