A Matter of Honor

Chapter Fifteen

General Buck Stigmuller’s home phone in Georgetown was still busy when Scotty Weir dialed the third time. Stigmuller had married late, an attractive divorcee with two daughters barely ready for kindergarten. Weir had, in fact, been his best man, flying into Hawaii on a muggy July day for the ceremony. Those two daughters must be in their teens now, he thought, but at least the number was current and some one was at home.

Tarbert Weir began to pace his study, attempting to clarify and then marshal the questions he wanted to ask Stigmuller. Birddogging for information was not the way Weir had expected to spend this evening and he felt himself growing restless, even angry, at the busy signals, the delays in his plans. It was his Army they were talking about... and since he had decided to help his son the general wanted to get the process underway.

As he paced he caught sight of his face reflected back at him from the glass doors of the trophy cabinets and was almost surprised at the hard, intent impatience in his features.

The general’s nose was sharply arched, the bridge twisted at the place where it had been broken years ago by the recoil of a misfiring artillery piece. That injury had occurred in Korea, and a medic had set and then reset Scotty Weir’s shattered nose at a battery command post, working by flashlight in a snowstorm. The break was clean, there was no infection, but Weir had insisted on going back into action and somehow, in the winds and cold, the bones had mended, causing the general’s nose to slant at a crooked angle between his high, strong cheekbones. As a result, his face had a damaged, almost piratical mien, an air of challenge, warmed only by the look of interest and communication in the dark eyes.

Scotty Weir had long enjoyed the battered look of his face; it gave him an edge of authority that had served him well in the military. He never had to give an order twice and few soldiers, from brass to noncoms, smiled at General Weir until they were sure he was ready to smile in return. How much he had changed in body and mind, he thought, since those first fading photographs were taken at the Tranchets’ barnyard outside the village of LePont, Belgium, nearly four decades ago.

Grimes had brought down the old mapcase from Weir’s upstairs bedroom, and the General leafed through it while waiting to get his call to Washington. The mapcase was of natural pigskin, long and wide enough to hold several folded maps, worn rough at the corners, the leather beginning to darken. It had been a Christmas gift from Maggie the first year they’d known each other. On active duty, at every post, at every battle station, Tarbert Weir had taken the mapcase with him, putting it to practical use and trusting it as a talisman link with Maggie.

In peacetime, on all their leaves and jaunts through the United States, Africa and Europe, often with young Mark in the back seat, they had kept the case in the glove compartment, tracing highways and mountain passes and back roads of their trips in bright red ink, like a vital network of the time and places they were able to be together.

After his wife’s death Weir had bound a thick rubber band around all the maps and that packet rested now with other memories at the bottom of the footlocker. Yet he could never quite force himself to discard the mapcase itself and tonight, even under the cured animal leather scent, he felt he could catch the faintest hint of Maggie’s perfume.

Now the General used the pigskin envelope as a filing case for his correspondence over four decades with Marta Tranchet, three dozen letters, telegrams of congratulations for his wedding, his promotions, a collection of photographs and — just last year — Marta’s proud letter stating that her only son, Claud Tranchet LeRoi (a full captain now) had been transferred with his Belgian unit to NATO forces outside Kassel, West Germany.

Grimes had brought the Tranchet file to the study on a tray with crackers and cheese, and a tall Scotch and soda.

Weir settled himself at his desk, opened the mapcase and then took a sip from the frosted goblet. The General held the glass, bell clear and etched with fine flowers, carefully in his big hand. It was one of the Val Saint Lambert set, he knew. Grimes was insistent that this farmhouse was the general’s home, that all the fine china and silver and crystal the Weirs had collected abroad be put to daily use. But on more than one evening, sitting alone, roiling with both unwanted energies and memories, thoughts intense almost beyond his control, General Weir had inadvertently crushed one of these fragile goblets in his strong hand.

He studied the old snapshot of himself at nineteen, stiff and shy in his private’s uniform, young Marta Tranchet standing close beside him, a coarse wool blanket with holes cut for the arms, serving as an overcoat for her thin child’s body. The day, the hour, the moment those pictures were taken seemed suddenly as vivid as yesterday to Tarbert Weir. Splash a little whiskey on your memories, he thought, and they flared up with a brilliance and radiance that startled you.

The pictures had been taken after the peace, when he went back to visit, but Private Weir first met the Claud Tranchets near the end of the war when his unit, caught in the crossfire and confusion of the Battle of the Bulge, were cut off and isolated, without orders and food supplies and almost without ammo, on the outskirts of a war-impoverished farm in rural Belgium. His platoon was then only a handful of stragglers, the first and second lieutenants dead and only a buck sergeant, badly wounded, to tell them what to do.

Supporting the sergeant between them, Weir and a buddy, followed by the half dozen other survivors, had made their way across the frozen, rutted mud of the barnyard to a dark and silent farmhouse, windows blown out from artillery tire, walls and timbers pockmarked by rifle shot.

Young Marta Tranchet was there, huddled with her parents in the freezing kitchen, almost out of their minds with cold and hunger and fear, waiting for the Germans to come down the hill at first light, waiting to die.

Claud Tranchet, a man in his late forties, had once been a prominent businessman in LePont, leasing this farm to tenants. Now he was gaunt and dirty, his arm tattooed with a concentration camp mark for political dissidents, his voice slurred, his mind wandering with the fever that often comes with starvation.

Tranchet had escaped from the concentration camp of Le Vernet in France, hiding for days in the outgrowth of the barriers of hedge-thorns that circled the camp instead of barbed wire. He had made his way up through the hostile French countryside at night to the Belgian border, and then across terrain he knew well to his own fields and farmhouse and his wife and child. But in the last half mile he had sighted a tank and German soldiers, twenty or more, bedded down for the night two meadows away, waiting for the morning light.

When the Americans entered the farmhouse that December night they found the Tranchet family crazed by terror, human beings unable to further absorb or accept or come to terms with human stress.

Claud Tranchet told the Americans about the German soldiers, and then put both arms protectively about his dazed wife and child. They had nothing to fear, he had told his family, and even now, in the warmth and familiarity of his own study, General Weir could remember the singsong words, the hiss of icy breath through the Belgian’s broken teeth.

The man had become mesmerized by the winter-dead lilac bush at the side of a stone barn — they could all see it beyond the broken window — a spray of dark sticks, slick with ice, but alive and meaningful to Claud Tranchet, a promise of life. It was a miracle, he told his family that night, a portent of the spring to come and of many other springs. The bush was filled with blossoms, he told them. It was a sign to them from God that they would live. Look, look, he cried, see it. The flowers are purple, they are wet with honey. Smell their fragrance. Even the Germans will know that our prayers have been answered, the Almighty has chosen...

Marta and her mother, mute and exhausted by fear, were lulled with these feverish rantings. They became trusting, passive, huddled together, staring out at the frozen bush, believing the miracle had happened.

Private Weir had waited in the house until dawn. Then he hooked three grenades to his belt, felt his way through a hole in the shattered wall and took off at a crouching run across the fields to where Tranchet had said he’d sighted Germans.

Weir, raised in the rough and snowy fields of Illinois, ran swiftly, moving like a yearling bear, silently, without wasting muscle. He needed the dark to hide him from the Germans, the dawn to show him where to go. A bear in pursuit can catch anything it wants to, he knew, not by running apace, but just by moving the whole body faster. Scotty Weir willed his young body to an almost bearlike speed.

Within minutes after leaving the farmhouse he had stopped behind a stand of trees. The German guard at a machine gun mount had come suddenly alert, swinging the gun position away from the farmhouse and trapped American soldiers and toward the young private crouching in the trees. But the guard’s actions came too late. Weir lobbed his grenades into the German encampment, and the three blasts, seconds apart, left little evidence, metal or human, in that huge crater to indicate what had been waiting there, what had terrorized the Tranchets into praying to a lilac bush.

Private Weir was later awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery. When he went back again to the farm it was spring, and the lilac tree was indeed in bloom, the sweet fragrance a benediction over the scarred and battered farmhouse.

Weir did not know exactly what he expected to find there, but he knew a part of him would be left forever at that Belgian farm. Young as he was, he realized there was a fulcrum for every soldier, a balance point in peacetime or in battle, when he knew the value of his uniform, when he behaved not just as a soldier or automaton, but as a sentient and courageous man. It was then he had decided to become a career soldier.

Over the years Weir and Marta Tranchet had kept in touch, cemented by the memory of fear and trust that for one night had been as strong and binding between them as any physical passion.

Maggie Weir had been understanding, even generous about his friendship with the Tranchets over the years. Weir had been the correspondent, but at Christmas when Marta married and when her only child was born, it was Maggie who remembered with cards and gifts. She had gone with him one winter to the LePont farm, now run by Marta’s husband, and stood with Colonel Weir and Marta at the window, looking out at the same lilac bush, fuller, taller, more twisted now, yet alive and greening under its coat of ice.

“I still believe it was a miracle that night,” Marta had whispered. “First the lilacs and then the young soldier...”

Maggie Weir had glanced down and seen that the young woman’s hand was entwined with her husband’s, narrow lingers with a gold wedding band, knuckles white, straining with emotion.

“Of course, it’s a kind of love she feels for you, Scotty,” she had said to the colonel as their Army touring car sped over the dark roads back to Liege. “One can know it just by listening and watching. You were with her at the crisis of her life. I can’t allow her to love you in my way, but except for death itself, I can think of no emotion more binding than mutual fear. You will always share that, you and little Marta.”

General Weir rearranged the letters and snapshots and wondered why he hadn’t thought to take a picture of Maggie and Marta together that cold afternoon. No, the mapcase was peopled only with Tranchets and young Claud Tranchet-LeRoi and Tarbert Weir, recorded there in photographs, faded black and white to rich color, boy soldier to full man.

Weir tried Georgetown again and this time Ann Stigmuller answered. “Scotty,” she said, “so wonderful to hear from you. Are you in town? Can we see you?”

“I’ll take a raincheck, Annie. I’m down on the farm in Illinois. I’ve been trying to reach you for a couple of hours.”

“Oh, dear,” she said. “That means the girls have been on the upstairs phone. But at least they’re home, and that’s something for teenagers these days. But then you never had any trouble at all with Mark...”

She caught herself sharply, and he heard her light laugh. “Damn, Scotty, I wish you were in town. We could talk and talk. Buck still starts every other sentence with ‘Scotty always said’...”

“If he’s there, Annie, I’d like to talk to him.”

“Hold on,” she said, and lowered her voice. “We have a couple of godawful bores here tonight, Pentagon-type senators that Buck has to toady up to now that he’s number one man in Appropriations and Budget. Buck’s like you, Scotty, he hates the politics that go with wearing stars. He walked them down to the greenhouse with coffee and brandy. He said he’d show them the cymbidiums I’ve been cultivating, though Buck wouldn’t know his ass from an aster, as our old gardener used to say. Sorry, Scotty. That was vulgar of me. I’ll buzz the greenhouse.”

General Buck Stigmuller had served as Scotty Weir’s aide in Korea for three years, and their paths had crossed again at military college and later in Germany. When Mark was at boarding school in Frankfurt, Stigmuller had often played surrogate at father-son affairs.

When he came on the line he said, “Stigmuller reporting, sir. Give me the number of the hill you want taken and cut me loose. How the hell are you, Scotty?”

“I’ll understand if you can’t answer me right off, Buck. Ann told me your social situation there. But I need a favor.”

“Not a favor,” Stigmuller said. “Make it an order and you’ve got it. What can I do for you?”

“I’d like you to take down the names and serial numbers of four deceased soldiers.” Then he told the general about Mark’s phone call and his request for help from the Army.

“I’m glad you called me first, and I’ll get right on it,” Stigmuller said. “You want background, profiles and/or records on these men to see if they interrelate, right? Aside from their uniforms and their deaths, what do they have in common. I gather that’s what Mark’s after.

“Tell you what. I’ll give this information to an intelligence officer I have confidence in. They have the computers for this. You may remember his father, Lieutenant-Colonel Benton, served with MacArthur all through the Pacific. Got killed later in a polo accident in Boca Raton, I’m sorry to say. But Richard Benton II is a corner, Scotty, a very bright and well-connected young officer. Breeds horses as a hobby, married a girl in a million or with a million, which amounts to the same thing, I guess. Tomorrow morning time enough?”

“I’ll be sure to let Mark know it was you. Now go take care of your guests, and thanks, Buck.”

“Thanks for what? Following orders from an old friend, Scotty? I’ll be back to you.”

Tarbert Weir put the slip of paper with Stigmuller’s phone number in the mapcase. Then he dialed his son’s apartment in Chicago, waiting as six rings went unanswered. Tomorrow was time enough, after he heard from Washington, but he needed the excuse to hear Mark’s voice again, let him know the old man could still give orders. On the seventh ring he hung up.

He replayed Bonnie Caidin’s tape message and wrote her phone number next to Mark’s on his notepad. He glanced at the wall clock. It was nearly midnight, too late to call a young lady, he decided. Probably she’d located Mark by now, chances are he might reach them both by dialing the same number... What had she said again? Her phone number and then the message that she had to talk to Mark about someone, a George Jackson.

The name meant nothing to Weir, but he wrote it out in block capitals next to Bonnie’s phone number and underlined it twice. George Jackson... he’d tell Mark when he talked to him.

Colonel Benton’s phone rang shortly after midnight. It was General Stigmuller. Colonel Benton sat upright, automatically pushing his tousled sandy hair back from his forehead.

“No, sir, it’s not the least bit inconvenient. I was just checking through some files here, a little late homework.”

His wife turned on her side to look at him, shading her eyes with her hand, her expression exasperated.

The colonel shook his head warningly at her and said, “Yes, general, I have a pad and pencil here. I’ll take down the names.” After a pause he added, “I’ll get my section right on it, sir. I’ll have a report for you and General Weir just as soon as we have the material collected.”

Hanging up, Benton got out of bed and said, “Goddamn everything.”

He went into the bathroom and took a swig of Maalox from the bottle. When he returned to the bedroom, his wife was sitting up, her bed jacket around her shoulders.

“Well, who was it?” she said. “I live in this house, too, you know.”

“Go back to sleep,” he said, and without bothering to put on a robe went downstairs to his study and placed calls on his private line to Major Staub and Captain Jetter. When he had them both on a scrambled conference line, he said, “I just got a call from General Stigmuller that was about as welcome as a turd in a punch bowl. Stigmuller says that old war horse, Tarbet Weir, wants information on those four military DOAs in Chicago.”

Froggie Jetter cleared his throat and said, “Just off the wall, sir, but couldn’t we tell General Stigmuller that Intelligence is aware of the situation, but it’s a sensitive area related to national security, and so forth?”

Colonel Benton felt a surge of rage and realized that the stiff drinks earlier in the evening hadn’t worked off as much as he thought they had. “Goddamn it, Froggie, talk sense. You don’t stonewall four star generals on the grounds of national security. They are national security, as they’re goddamn quick to tell you. Major?”

“Yes, sir,” the Major said evenly.

“Get to work on this, okay? Muddy the waters, buy us time. Don’t lie when you don’t have to, but put together a nice, tranquillizing cover-up for Stigmuller and General Weir. In the terminology of Weir’s war, I want a snow job.” He paused. “As an officer in the United States Army, I’m pledged to obey orders. As a member of Military Intelligence, I’m entitled to decide whether or not I damn well should. Our plans of last evening will stand, gentlemen.”

“What do we know about Weir?” Major Staub said. “Would it be useful to run an update check on him?”

“General Weir is probably just a meddler, another piece of retired brass playing bridge or hacking around a three-par golf course somewhere, wishing he still had some ass to kick. But we’ll play it cautious. Froggie, use your classification and pull his file.”

After hanging up Colonel Benton went into a downstairs powder room and took another two teaspoonsful of Maalox from his standby supply. In spite of his disparaging comments to his junior officers, he began to remember things he’d known and heard about Tarbert Weir — General Scotty, the old man had called him — and those memories suddenly stirred and sharpened the unwelcome acid tensions in his stomach.