A Matter of Honor

Chapter Twenty-two

At sergeant Malleck’s request, a military intern stopped by the Armory to examine and treat injuries to the face and torso of one Private George Jackson. The young doctor cleaned and bandaged cuts on the face and forehead, treated deep bruises in the rib and groin areas and administered nine stitches to close a gash that ran from the soldier’s left eyelid up through the eyebrow to his temple. Then he medicated and taped the battered rib cage.

“I don’t know what gets into you fellows,” the doctor said to his silent patient, “riding those choppers without a helmet. Look at yourself. You could have lost the sight of an eye if that cut had gone half an inch lower. I did some motocross riding in college and I never got on a bike without a helmet and goggles.”

“You know how it is,” Malleck said easily, “some smart-asses are just too smart to take advice.”

Lasari spent the next forty-eight hours on a cot in the locked back room and then, on orders cut by Malleck, shipped out on a civilian aircraft to Boulder, Colorado, where he and his traveling companion, Private Homer Robbins, were met by military jeep and transported to the bivouac area of the division to which Private George Jackson’s orders assigned him.

Code-named Lucky Thirteenth, the unit was a mobile armored division scheduled for maneuvers in Germany. It would be flown by cargo plane in a twenty-four-hour relay from Colorado to an assembly area between Munich and Regensburg, from which its components would be trucked to an eight-mile defense position in the Bavarian forest adjacent to the Czechoslovakian border.

When the last soldiers had been grouped and deplaned for Europe, with George Jackson on the roster, Private Robbins telephoned Malleck at the Armory, spent one night drinking in the bars of Boulder, then took a flight back to O’Hare.

Following Malleck’s threats and instructions, Lasari had been an unobtrusive but cooperative member of the Lucky Thirteenth, made no friends, and revealed nothing of his former military background.

On a raw March afternoon, two days after leaving Colorado, the soldier listed as George Jackson, PFC, traveled on new orders cut for him by a First Sergeant Jacob Jens, orders sending him from Regensburg to Heidelberg. The papers provided him with transport authority and a per diem allowance for a twenty-one day transfer to Master Sergeant Ernest Strasser’s headquarters battalion, attached to the Seventh Army at Campbell Barracks outside the medieval town of Heidelberg.

Lasari traveled alone in an autobus that sped at ninety kilometers on a highway linking the two cities. At the bus station he swung his duffel bag over his shoulder and took a cab to Sergeant Strasser’s apartment.

Sergeant Strasser lived in suburban Heidelberg on a pleasant, beech-lined street, the newer buildings designed to blend with the slant-roofed and gemutlich architecture of the older part of town.

The apartment was on the second floor, with a decal of an American flag above the doorbell. A blonde girl in black slacks and a red turtleneck sweater answered the first ring.

Lasari identified himself as Private George Jackson and the young woman said simply, “I’m Greta.”

Putting on a heavy coat and picking up a string shopping bag, she said with a wide gesture, “There are things to drink behind the bar, and cigarettes if you like.” She extended her hand and shook formally with him. “Goodbye now, perhaps I will be with you for dinner.”

Lasari placed his duffel bag on the floor, then put his hands at his sides and stood at near attention inside the door. He saw the oaken bar in the corner with a pair of cowhide stools and near it a large TV set, draped with a crocheted runner. The room was overheated and smelled strongly of pine-scented air freshener.

Around the room, two feet from the ceiling, ran a shelf lined with ornate beer mugs, ceramic figurines shaped like trolls, dwarfs and comic bears in Bavarian costumes.

A half dozen intricate cuckoo clocks, designed like cottages, hung from the walls. None seemed to be ticking at the moment and their pendulums, shaped like pine cones, hung heavy and still. Except for an inlaid chess table and a red leather ottoman which looked Moroccan, the rest of the furniture was sturdy and functional, thick nylon carpets, sofas and chairs in russet tweed, holders jammed with American magazines and a coffee table with a bowl of wax fruit and a compote dish of gumdrops.

A faint hiss of heat came from the radiators, and in the stone fireplace another heater glowed behind a screen etched with logs and imitation flames. Lasari’s uniform felt rough and scratchy against his damp hands, and he was aware of sweat forming around the scar tissue on his forehead.

He heard a man’s voice say, “He’s here now, I’ll get back to you.” Then a phone was replaced and Sergeant Strasser walked into the room. He stopped and looked at Lasari appraisingly.

Ernest Strasser’s hair was gray, cut short, and his light complexion was emphasized by clear and pale blue eyes. He wore civilian clothes, slacks, a gray sweater and plaid sport shirt.

He was a small man, several inches shorter than Lasari, with a corded neck and wide shoulders and a springy, muscular tension in his movement. Yet there was a nervousness in the man, a shifty sense of insecurity that was at variance with his cold eyes and weightlifter’s shoulders.

“Let’s get a couple of things straight, Jackson,” he said. “I’m boss this side of the water. I got you sprung from Lucky Thirteenth and you’re gonna train some dogs here where I can keep an eye on you. But there won’t be any buddy-buddy shit between you and me. I’m Sergeant Strasser and you’re an Article 15 fuckup and don’t ever forget it.”

“I understand, Sergeant Strasser,” Lasari said.

“That’s another thing. Don’t be so fucking quick to understand me,” Strasser said. “I’ll do the thinking for both of us.

“Tomorrow, first thing, I’ll take you out to the barracks. My CQ will do all the paperwork on your transfer, payroll, temporary quarters and so forth. Put it down kosher. You’ll be living off base, right here in this apartment, a bedroom back by the kitchen. It’s small, used to be the maid’s room, but you’re lucky to get it. Housing for GIs off base is tight as a witch’s cunt. Like telephones, insurance, a new car, like everything else in this country, it costs too much. Unless you’ve got connections with the right Krauts around here, you’ll wind up a fucking paraplegic. If you want something, they charge you an arm and a leg.”

“Why dogs?” Lasari asked.

Strasser shrugged. “Malleck filled me in. You had some training in dog handling back in the States, before ’Nam, right? If that hadn’t showed up on your record, I’d have found something else for you to do. You’re a mechanic, played a little semipro ball, got some rank in unarmed combat. I could of made use of any of that shit. One of our corps commanders is a baseball fanatic. Another thinks he’s a fucking Bruce Lee. But it’s dogs. I want you to fit in where you look natural.”

As he spoke Strasser walked around the room, squinting up at the beer mugs and trolls, touching the pine cones of the cuckoo clocks in a curiously possessive way, as if he was evaluating them.

“Yeah,” he said, “the dogs work best for us. Besides, I don’t want you talking to anything that can talk back. A colonel in ordnance breeds German shepherds and Dobermans. He’s got kennel runs behind his place, fucking platoons of attack dogs behind electrified fences. Some of the best championship bitches from Germany and Austria. His tour of duty is up in six months and he’s shipping them back to some spread he’s got in Michigan. He’ll have the seed and breed dogs for one of the biggest attack-and-guard dog ranches in the country. He’s thirty-nine years old and says he’ll be a millionaire by the time he’s forty-five.”

The sergeant pulled an overstuffed chair closer to the wall, stood on the cushions and realigned a row of beer steins on the shelf, measuring the distance between them with his thick fingers. Then he replaced the chair.

“The U.S. taxpayer is putting the fucking colonel into the guard dog business, you know that, Jackson? His dogs get free vets’ care here, he orders their chow through the PX, and the mutts get shipped home free as part of his household goods. Pretty fucking smart deal.”

“I guess you’re right,” Lasari said. “Sounds like a smart deal to me.”

“That’s another thing, don’t do any fucking guessing,” the sergeant said. “A lot of things are gonna happen that you don’t understand, but there’s no point guessing about them. I can tell you something else, Jackson.” Strasser turned to glare at him, taking a deep breath so that his powerful shoulders and chest filled out. “There are things even I don’t bother guessing at. So you better keep that in mind if you want to have a happy time around here.”

“I’m here to do what I’m told, sergeant,” Lasari said. “I’m a mechanic, know some karate, and how to go into the hole for a ground ball, which adds up to being an Article 15 fuckup. You’re going to tell me about the dogs I’m supposed to train and that puts us in business. I’m not here to understand things or to make any guesses. That about sum it all up?”

Strasser raised his hand in mock protest and smiled. “Okay, okay, Jackson. I’m not a professional hardnose. You can’t be one in this fucking man’s army. We got everything now but a goddamn union to contend with. You forget yourself and call some stupid black slob a ‘burrhead’ and he doesn’t go sulk behind the latrine, he calls a meeting and they start sending wires to their congressmen.”

He shook his head as if unable to understand, then said, “Now to the business of Private Jackson. The colonel’s name is Warneke. He’s got two seven-month-old German shepherd pups he wants to keep as pets for his daughters. They’ll live with the family so they gotta be toilet-trained and he wants them to go anywhere, even in traffic, with or without a lead. He doesn’t want any snapping, roughhousing or fear-biting. He doesn’t want them to take food from strangers because there’s so goddamn many kooks in Germany from Turkey and the Middle East and he’s also worried about terrorists trying to poison GI dogs or maybe even his kids.

“The colonel lives near the river by a big park, St. Hubert’s. My driver will drop you there in the morning, pick you up at night after you get the dogs back. You got twenty-one days at this locale, then we cut your new orders.”

Strasser stopped in front of Lasari, then circled him and looked him up and down from all angles. “You got some decent civilian clothes in that luggage of yours, soldier? The colonel don’t want his dogs to have a military complex.”

“Just slacks and a windbreaker.”

Strasser took a roll of German marks from his pocket and counted out a thick pack. “Get something to work in. And buy yourself a suit, some shirts and a tie. We’re going to be having dinner with some important people in a couple of nights. One guy from Yugoslavia named Vayetch, Pyter Vayetch. He spells the ‘Peter’ with a ‘y’ and he’s particular about that. You’ll be carrying something for him one of these days, so he wants to check you out. Just remember the rules, don’t bother guessing about any of it. You drink, Lasari?”

“I don’t need to, if that’s what you’re asking. Some red wine now and then, that’s about it.”

Strasser walked to one end of the bar and picked up an object in carved wood about two feet tall, a miniature mountain man with chiseled shirt and lederhosen, cocked hat, walking stick, and a simpleton’s smile. It had been beautifully crafted, with even the mock leather stitching on little britches defined. After studying it for a few moments, Strasser put the figure back on the bar, patting the head absently, as if showing affection to a child.

Without looking at Lasari, he said, “You met Greta, didn’t you?”

“The girl who was here? Yes, I met her.”

“She’ll talk your socks off about American television,” Strasser said. “Starsky and Hutch, Wonder Woman, Kojak... She calls him ‘my bald one.’ She thinks she means one-balled or eunuch or something like that. I can’t understand her when she goes off in German. Her favorites are Charlie’s Angels. She keeps scrapbooks on them and she’s got her hair cut like Farrah’s, you notice. Now she wants a motorcycle. She wants me to buy her one so she can ride up in back of me and wear white cowboy boots. She’s like every goddamn German I ever met. That’s all she thinks of — getting more.”

Strasser turned and looked steadily at Lasari. “She’s twenty-four years old but she’s just a kid. She may sound stupid, but she’s important to me. You understand what I’m telling you?”

“You told me not to understand things too fast,” Lasari said. “But if I’m going to be here three weeks, we’d better get this out in the open. There’s only one person in this setup who can keep the girl in your bedroom, Strasser, and that’s you.”

“But you’re the one who’s gotta walk easy. You’re the fucker Malleck has a file on.”

Lasari picked up his duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Show me the room you’ve got for me and I’ll unpack.”

He followed the sergeant down a narrow hall till the man stopped at the doorway of a small room. “In here,” he said.

“Before you go, I want to point out something to you, Sergeant Strasser,” Lasari said. “I’ve got a lot to lose in this deal, I know that, but I’ve already lost a lot, haven’t I? So that gives me an advantage. I no longer have everything to lose but you have — and everyone better keep that in mind.”