A Matter of Honor

Chapter Thirty-eight

The queasiness wasn’t only in his stomach, Lasari decided, it was also at the base of his skull. There was a warm, almost fluid response in his spine, and he felt a sudden move might cause his head to disintegrate.

He tried to focus his eyes on the strange room. The ceiling was high beamed with a narrow balcony running around the second floor and a series of small doors that seemed to lead to bedrooms. A gray stone fireplace dominated the downstairs area, with two stuffed wild boars’ heads over the mantel, as well as a pair of old-fashioned wooden skis, carefully waxed and preserved, with red pompoms on the ankle straps. An unlit fire was laid in the grate and the room smelled of dampness and old leather.

The man had opened the windows of the Mercedes, but the night air did little to clear Lasari’s narcotic fog. He remembered sprawling in the back seat, half sick from the chloroform, fading in and out of consciousness. During the climb into the mountains high winds had been lulling, almost hypnotic, but the sharp turns in the road had sickened him and caused bile to rise in his throat. Once he had raised his head to see where they were going and glimpsed only giant pine trees, studded with upright cones, and then his mind slipped back into darkness.

Now he licked his lips in an attempt to speak and was repelled by the taste of the drug. His breathing was shallow and irregular, and when he tried to rub his numb cheeks his hands were chill and clammy.

“It’s cold as hell in here,” he said weakly from the armchair.

“You’re all right. We won’t be here long enough to burn a fire. Drink this tea.”

Lasari focused on the man’s voice and his vision cleared so he could make out General Tarbert Weir, the man from Philo Park, sitting at a table opposite him. A steaming mug sat on the table, along with the contents of Lasari’s pockets, including the vial of pills, the matchbook and American passport. The general was in full uniform and he had placed Lasari’s duffle bag in front of him, holding it firmly in place with a highly polished boot.

“You tried to kill me, didn’t you, you bastard,” Lasari said.

“That wasn’t my intention,” Scotty Weir said. “I gave you forty-five seconds on my pocket chronometer, then a few extra inhalations just to be sure. That was about an hour ago. Another sixty minutes or so of normal breathing, and you’ll have exhaled ninety percent of the anesthesia.”

“I can’t see right,” Lasari said.

The general struck a match and held it close to Lasari’s face. “Your pupils are still dilated, but you’re coming around.”

“Where are we?”

“Schwartzwald, an old ski lodge, a kind of mom-and-pop operation that went out of business when the big resorts were developed in the Zugspitz area. It’s an Army safe house, code name Case Ace Two. I have the key.”

“How far are we from where you picked me up?”

“In a direct line, down the old ski slopes, about six or eight miles, but taking the mountain roads, I’d say about thirty-five. We’re alone here, soldier, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I thought I heard someone. I thought I heard a car.”

“A highway patrol passes on the main road once or twice a night, but you couldn’t hear it from here,” Weir said. He rose, slung the duffel bag on a couch and walked to a shuttered window, opening it a crack. He looked out over the snowy courtyard toward the parked Mercedes, pulled up against a windbreak hedge. There was one set of tire tracks coming in, then two sets of footprints approaching the front door. “It’s stopped snowing,” he said, “but there’s a lot of wind out there.”

“I still think you tried to kill me,” Lasari said, his stiff lips barely forming words. He lifted an arm and winced. “I think you cracked my rib cage.”

General Weir left the window. He took Lenox Riley’s .38 special from his inner tunic and put it on the table. “If I wanted to kill you, soldier, I wouldn’t have to do it the hard way.”

He passed the mug of tea to Lasari and closed the man’s chilled fingers around it. Lasari tried to sip but the cup chattered against his teeth. Weir took it from him, set it back on the table.

“We are not under surveillance here, there are no hidden microphones,” Weir said evenly. “I want answers. Let me repeat what I told you in Philo Park. My son, Lieutenant Mark Weir, was shot and killed in Chicago about two weeks ago. He was shot because he knew something, but probably didn’t know enough. A young woman calls my home and leaves an urgent message on my phone tape. She wants to talk to Mark about ‘George Jackson, that soldier.’ ”

“I told you back in the park,” Lasari said. “I’m a buck-ass private in the U.S. Army on assignment in Germany. I’ve got papers and orders...”

“Spare me that spiel,” Weir said. “Within hours of that phone call my son is ambushed and executed, Miss Caidin is beaten bloody on the way to the hospital and within another forty-eight hours Private George ‘No Middle Initial’ Jackson, a new ID in Army records, gets rush orders to join the Lucky Thirteenth in Colorado and leave almost immediately for Germany.”

Lasari reached for the mug of tea and took several hasty swallows. “... Miss Caidin is beaten bloody.” A rush of anger had surged through his body, leaving his mouth burning, his tongue parched and dry.

“You’re involved in something you shouldn’t be involved in,” the general said. “You know that, I know that. You can save us both a lot of further pain and trouble by telling the truth.”

“I don’t know who killed your son, I don’t know what’s going on in Chicago.”

“Maybe this will clear your thinking,” Weir said. “My son was working on a case involving four American soldiers. His jurisdiction was Chicago, but he suspected the key was in Europe. All four of those men were, as you put it, buck-ass privates in the U.S. Army doing their duty on assignment in Germany. They all had papers, they all had orders. And they all had one more thing in common. They were murdered in Chicago right after getting back from Germany...”

“I can’t help you,” Lasari said, but suddenly other words were sparking like electric shocks through the haze of confusion and sedation. Strasser, in his vindictive drunkenness, had said too much, had almost spelled it out. “ ‘... the next friendly face you, Jackson, will see will be at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. Just one more GI on leave. You’ll be met by friends.’ And Eddie Neal with his farewell message ‘... unfinished business between you and me... Yeah, Jackson, we still got some things to settle.’ ”

The general picked up the passport and flipped it open to Lasari’s new picture. “A new passport, soldier? Where did you think you were going? What name were you going to put in this one, George Jackson or Durham Lasari?” He waited for an answer, then said, “What name were you going to desert under this time? That’s the long and short of it, isn’t it? Even with trumped-up papers, you were going to betray your uniform again. You did plan to desert a second time, didn’t you, Lasari?”

“You live in a tidier world than I do, general. You’re talking about the Articles of War, I’m talking about survival. I’m facing the federal pen, or worse. I hadn’t decided how to save myself.”

The wind seemed to be circling the house, rattling shutters, sending a whistling draft down the chimney and stirring the fir branches that touched the roof. For a moment both men stopped to listen. Then Lasari broke the silence. “We had a motto in ’Nam, general, something you wouldn’t understand. It applies only to the men who take orders, never to the men who give them. ‘It don’t mean nothing.’ that was our motto, our fingerhold on sanity. Sure, I’m a deserter, but I wanted to make good on that desertion. I wanted clean paper. I was working with Miss Caidin in Chicago and got double-crossed by the Army itself.”

“Exactly what does that mean, soldier?”

“There’s nothing more I want to say. You think I’m scum, a yellow belly, a man who’d betray his uniform. Okay. What about your desertion, general? Bonnie Caidin told me you retired because you couldn’t explain yourself or your wars to your son. What made you crack, general? Where the hell was your sense of responsibility to the Army? You took the good paper, the privileges, the pension and walked away. I just walked away with nothing in my hands but crutches. You’re talking to me about loyalty and patriotism, I think you’re trying to talk to a dead man. I’m not your son, general.”

The general picked up the gun and walked to the windows. He cracked open the shutters and studied the darkness outside. Then he went to the front door, opened it and stood in silence. There were winds and the sounds of a stormy mountain night but nothing more. He closed the door and came back to stand opposite Lasari.

Scotty Weir pulled the receiver of the automatic back and released it to slam a round into the chamber, then pointed the gun at Lasari. “Whatever it is you’re afraid of,” he said, “I want you to be more afraid of me, soldier. Hear me good. You’re a two-time deserter, and I wear four silver stars. If I decide to pull this trigger, we won’t disturb anything more than a couple of snow owls.”

“I’ve got nothing to tell you,” Lasari said.

The general turned suddenly, pulled the duffel bag off the couch and tossed it at Lasari’s feet. “You can tell me about that duffel, why it’s so important to you.”

“It isn’t,” Lasari said. “There’s nothing in it but some GI gear and a couple of presents I wanted to bring back to the States.”

“Not good enough,” Scotty Weir said and pulled back one cuff of his shirt and tunic. Lasari saw the broad, strong hand, a glint of a silver ID bracelet, then the swollen flesh of the wrist, clawed with long scratches and scarred by tooth marks. “When I put the gauze over your face, you fought like a bull terrier to keep that bag...”

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” Lasari said.

“I think you do,” the General said. He took out a pocket knife, flicked open the blade and reached down to slash the canvas side of the bag. “Let’s see what you’re carrying, soldier.”

“No! Don’t do that! It’s my only way out!” Lasari stood, still groggy, and took a wild, looping swing at Weir. Weir backhanded his almost casually along the side of the head with the revolver, sending him slumping back into the chair.

He looked at his watch. “We’ve got time, Lasari, if you start talking pronto. And we’re not going anywhere until you do.”

“Against my will I’m part of a drug loop,” Lasari said at last. “I believe if I could complete the loop, there’s a chance to indict the people involved, do myself and the world a favor. But it’s a tough gamble. I’m convinced I’ll be killed and/or sent to prison along the way. Back there at maneuvers, I was trying to make up my mind how to figure my odds.”

“Let me help you,” Tarbert Weir said.

Lasari started with the first night at the Veterans’ Bureau and told the general what had happened since then, from Sergeant Malleck to the armory, through Sergeant Strasser and Pytor Vayetch, the false illness, and the military papers already cut for transport back to Chicago.

The general’s face was impassive, but the eyes were dark with growing fury as he paced back and forth in front of the fireplace.

“Heroin,” he said, and the word was isolated like a bitter echo in the cold room. “Greed, lies, murder. Betrayal and corruption hiding behind the American flag. It must be stopped. My son wasn’t born for this, he goddamn well shouldn’t have had to die for it.” His voice was rough with emotion. “We ask you men to join us, to raise their hands in oath... There are certain trusts that cannot be betrayed, soldier. This is a matter of honor.”

He moved to stand directly in front of Lasari. “And you believe that if you could get back to Malleck, if you completed the circle, you could tell the military everyone who is involved?”

Lasari shrugged. “I believe so. At least every name, number and order that I personally saw or heard from Chicago to Ludensdorf and back, the whole loop.”

“You’ve kept a written record?”

“No. Nothing on paper, but I’ve got a freak memory. I know your identification number, for instance, 397-07-1991.” Lasari rattled off the nine figures easily. “I saw your ID bracelet in Philo Park.”

“You have a photographic memory, you remember everything?”

“Only what I want to,” Lasari said. “I don’t go through life memorizing billboards.”

For a moment the General was lost in thought. “It’s like a medical technique. Doctors put a chemical dye in the bloodstream and then trace it through the body’s circulating system to find cancers and malfunctions. You’re like that little red blood stain, tracking and marking every step of the way.”

He touched the duffel bag with the toe of his boot, then lifted it and tried the heft in his hand. “We can do it, soldier!” he said then. “You can do it. Do yourself, do your country a favor. Go back to Chicago on schedule, complete that loop...”

“You’re offering me about the same deal as Malleck,” Lasari said hotly, “except that you’ve sweetened it with some patriotic talk.”

“Wrong,” the General said. “I’ll be in Chicago before you, I’ll alert the right people. And I’ll testify for you afterward. The Army will believe Scotty Weir, goddamn it. They’ll hear what we’ve got to say.”

He looked at his watch, then removed the Observer bands from a pocket and slipped them over his sleeves. “Get yourself together, Lasari, and I’ll bring the car around. You’re going back to the base. If there’s been an AWOL report on you. I’ll countermand it. This is one more time I put these stars to work.”

In the far courtyard Lasari heard the Mercedes engine turn over, then the sound of tires crunching on the snow. He put the passport, pills and matchbook in his pocket, checked the zipper on the duffel and looked around the room. There was nothing but a half mug of cold tea on the table to show anyone had been there.

The general was behind the wheel of the car, coming up the circle drive leading to the Schwartzwald, headlights on low, the glow pinpointing Lasari against the lodge. There was a sudden squeal of brakes and the general’s shout, “Look out there, soldier!”

As he threw himself to the snow Lasari heard bullets cracking around him as if he were the focal point of a three-way firelight. A bullet sliced through the empty air where he had been standing only seconds before. There were two more shots and something large and dark and full of pain fell to the ground a few feet from him. The Mercedes was still running in its own pool of light, surrounded by silence.

Lasari ran toward the fallen body near the front door. A moon had broken through the storm clouds with enough light to show the body of a big man in an open topcoat, lying face downward in the snow. Lasari used both hands to turn the body over and saw it was Herr Rauch, his collarbones smashed and his upper chest dark with waxy blood, a Mauser automatic still gripped in his hand.

Lasari felt through the man’s pockets. There were no papers, no wallet, nothing but a set of car keys, several fine linen handkerchiefs and a roll of breath mints.

Lasari ran to the Mercedes. General Weir had fallen to his knees and was leaning against the car, a hand to his chest. “It’s never as bad as it looks, soldier,” he said.

“I’ll get you to a hospital,” Lasari said.

“No. The German highway patrol will be by within the hour.” The general tried to rise but the effort was too great. “I’m giving the orders here. Take this car and get back to camp. Don’t break that loop, Lasari.”

“I can’t leave you here.”

“You’ve got to. Get those bastards, soldier.”

“How can I go it alone? Who can I trust? Who’ll trust me?”

“Call the States, use a public airport phone. Get John Grimes, my place in Springfield. He’ll need General Stigmuller and Sergeant Gordon, tell him I said so. And here, soldier.”

With ragged breathing and in obvious pain the General slipped his hand inside his tunic and took out a wallet, sorting through it with numbing fingers. Between bits of tissue paper he located the Medal of Honor, the Liberty head, stars and the single word Valor clearly visible in the moonlight. “Take it,” he said. “That will show them Scotty Weir sent you.”

Lasari hesitated only a moment. “I won’t need the car, general,” he said. “Let me help you out of this wind.” He switched off the Mercedes engine, then lifted Weir into the car on the driver’s side.

Back in the lodge Lasari took the skis off the wall racks, pulled a blanket from the couch and went back to the car.

“It’s never as bad as it looks,” the general said, barely audible, as Lasari bundled the blanket around him. Then he turned the headlights to bright, cradled the general’s head on a folded arm and arranged the body to lean against the steering wheel. A shrill wail sounded in the night as the general’s inert weight pressed against the horn.

Lasari strapped on the skis, picked up the duffel and glided over the snow to the top of the old ski run. There was just enough light to pick out the path down the mountain, lined on either side with pines and tufted with scrub growth. About six or eight miles down the trail, the general said, with twists and turns and unknown terrain ahead.

Lasari hoisted the duffel over his head, ignoring the painful spasms in his bruised chest, and tried a couple of tentative knee bends. It was not the challenge of the slope that worried him; it was the network of nerves that were tingling through the old wounds in his thigh and calf, a betraying sign of weakness or crippling fear.

Lasari pushed off and started down the slope, the cold wind bringing tears to his eyes and wetting his cheeks. It seemed to him a long, long time, dodging scrub and gliding past tall conifers, before the wailing sound of the Mercedes’ horn faded behind him into the night.

He halted with a sharp Christiana a few hundred yards above the maneuver area, where he could see lights and make out signs of movement.

Concealing the skis in deep brush, he took out the American passport and tore each page into a dozen pieces, letting the fragments mix with the wind. From his pocket he removed the bottle of pills (“... take three,” Vayetch had said) and shook out six small capsules, washing them down with a mouthful of snow.

For the first time he noticed heavy blood stains on his tunic and spent several minutes rubbing at the spots with handfuls of snow, leaving crimson stains on the ground around him.

Lasari had begun the final walk downhill, duffel in hand, when the first wave of nausea struck him. He began to walk faster, breathing deeply and trying to focus on the lights below. The quantity of blood on his uniform had surprised and disconcerted him.

“It’s never as bad as it looks”... the general had said that twice. And Lasari was determined to believe him.