A Matter of Honor

Chapter Twenty-nine

Bitte and Danke were purebred Alsatians, intelligent, active, but eager for discipline. Duro Lasari had been working out with them for several days in a secluded promenade in Philo Park. The trees and shrubbery were bare now, held together by a series of winding pathways that led directly to Heidelberg’s oldest bridge, a long, graceful stone arch called Alte Brucke. Between the rows of elm and linden the area was alive with strollers, joggers, nursemaids pushing baby carriages, and students on benches, studying with their coat collars turned up against the wind off the river.

Bitte was a cream and silver female and Danke was a black male with huge paws and a thick body, weighing almost fifty pounds. Lasari had been told by Sergeant Strasser that the dogs responded only to German, but their owner wanted them trained to English commands. In the morning Lasari was picked up at the apartment by an armed driver in a military jeep who took his daily orders from Strasser. The training sessions with the dogs were on staggered hours: four hours the first day, then six, then four and so on. At the end of each time period the dogs were returned to the kennels and Lasari was driven back to Strasser’s apartment.

Lasari was working with beginners’ basics, just as he had learned to dog handle in his early army days. He was training both dogs at once, on a double lead system, walking them back and forth at his heels, left and right with single commands — “heel,” “sit,” and “stay.”

He wore civilian clothes, a zippered windbreaker and chinos tucked into short boots. He carried a pair of cuffed leather gloves folded in his back pocket but the dogs did not nip or show a tendency to bite, so he had decided on barehand signals and rewards.

There had been a brief respite in the initial hours under the trees with the responsive animals, but Lasari realized from the first day that he was not alone or unwatched in Philo Park. He heard the sound of a distinctive Southern voice once and spotted Eddie Neal buying a bratwurst from a vendor. Again, taking the dogs for a run, he saw Strasser and Greta having hot chocolate at a terrace café and Greta had turned quickly, bending down as if to retie the laces on her white boots. The same middle-aged American he had noticed at the bar in the Atelier was seated on a park bench one morning, reading a German newspaper. A few moments later he strolled off and was gone. There were several persons he saw every day, well-dressed, energetic men, moving as if walking were a serious business, but he could not tell if they were businessmen, tourists or professors from the university on a break between classes. It was Herr Rauch whom Lasari was most concerned about, but he was nowhere in sight.

Lasari tried to concentrate on the dogs, keeping his commands brief and efficient, but his thoughts were splintered. He was preoccupied with the trap he was in, frustrated and sullen that he could think of no way out. In the treadmill of his mind it seemed to him that, either as Duro Lasari or George Jackson, he had no options, no choice in any direction that would not be rewarded by time in a federal prison. There was not even the challenge of a maze to face; behind every closed door or twisted corridor a Neal or Strasser, a Malleck or a military court-martial was lying in wait for him.

On his fourth day in Philo Park, Lasari became aware of difficulties with Danke. The big dog’s eyes were alert and intelligent, and he trembled to please and obey commands. But after each workout, the animal became restless, could not hold the “stay” position and turned to Lasari with whining yelps. Lasari reprimanded him with a sharp tap on the muzzle, a stern verbal rebuke. Then he noticed the male dog seemed hot, panting heavily, while the female was calm. Both wore heavy leather collars, studded with decorative brass, but it was Danke that repeatedly sank back on his haunches, yelped and scratched at his ruff.

Lasari called the dog to him and ran a finger under its collar. The collar was not too tight but at the back, in the area just over the ripple of neck muscles, Lasari’s fingers touched a small aluminum microphone. Over the days, in the heat of workouts and sweat, and the metallic surface of the detecting device had interacted to irritate the dog’s skin. Lasari found a discarded newspaper in a trash basket, tore off a section and folded it under the microphone to protect the dog’s hide.

Lasari knew the microphone was connected to a wireless receiver, monitored by someone watching him from the Alte Brucke, the café or some wooded corner of Philo Park he could not see. He bent over to pat Danke’s head, smoothing his hand over its pointed ears, murmuring words of reassurance and praise to the animal. He was trying to decide whether to remove the dog’s collar or simply yank the wires loose, cutting himself free from whatever spies were following him, monitoring his every word. Then he fluffed the dog’s thick ruff around the collar and stood upright. He would let the device stay in place, he decided, until he knew why it was hidden there. Maybe the microphone would tell him something about his enemies.

He turned abruptly as someone spoke behind him.

“I’ve been watching you for a couple of days,” the man said. “You’re doing a hell of a good job with those dogs, soldier.”

It was the word “soldier” and the uncompromising authority in the stranger’s voice that sent Lasari signals of alarm. The man was ambling toward him on a graveled path, face open but unsmiling, as if this were a meeting both had arranged and expected.

The Alsatians pulled at the leashes, straining toward the newcomer. “Sit!” Lasari commanded and the dogs sank back on their haunches, watching both men with warm, alert eyes.

“They get confidence doing what they’re told,” Lasari said. “That’s how they’re bred.”

The man was in his middle years, dressed in a gray jogger’s suit over a black turtleneck sweater that showed at the neck and around the powerful wrists. His hair was black and cut short, with thick threads of gray at the temples and a touch of frost through the dark eyebrows. He might have been a fighter at one time in his life, Lasari thought, noting the big-knuckled hands and the broken nose, a powerful, twisted ridge between the high cheekbones and dark, appraising eyes.

“I notice you don’t use gloves or a quirt,” the man said. “You are not training them as guard dogs then?”

“I’m training them as guard dogs, yes. Attack dogs, no. They will learn to take commands and protect a master. We want them courageous, not paranoid.”

The man smiled coolly. “Some Alsations can be very temperamental, inbred and nervous. And you feel you’ve accurately judged the potential of these animals in these few days? You just over from the States, right?”

Lasari watched the man’s impassive eyes, unwilling to answer either question until he could understand why it was asked. Then he said, “You have a special interest in dogs, mister?”

“I’ve got hunting dogs on my farm in Illinois,” the stranger said. “My dogs will hold point indefinitely if I give the command, even if we kick up a brood. I’ve had a lot of experience with guns and dogs.” He paused, as if expecting a response, then said, “I’m General Tarbert Weir, U.S. Army, retired. I thought you might know who I am.”

“I don’t,” Lasari said.

General Weir moved closer to him, his hands at his sides. He was a full head taller than Lasari and the bulk and nearness of his body were more formidable than his words.

“Did you know my son, Lieutenant Mark Weir of the Chicago police department?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then can you tell me why someone would leave a message for my son on my phone tape, asking him to call her about George Jackson?”

The male dog gave a yelp, rose on its haunches and twisted its head within the ring of the leather collar. “Stay!” Lasari said sharply. “Stay, Danke!”

As he spoke to the dog, Lasari took a furtive glance around the perimeters of Philo Park, at the passersby, the distant café, the traffic crossing the Alte Brucke. The sudden appearance of General Weir had startled him. He could feel the pounding of his heart, unable to know at once if it was hope or fear. Bonnie Caidin had urged him to trust her and her friend. Mark Weir can help you, she’d said. Then he remembered Sergeant Malleck’s derisive words and the brief spasm of hope was displaced by a wary distrust.

He could spot no surveillance on the immediate horizons, but he knew that someone would be monitoring and remembering every word of this conversation.

“It’s a big world, general,” he said, “and I think you found yourself the wrong George Jackson.”

“I don’t consider that a responsive answer, soldier,” Weir said. “Let me try you on this one. Do you know a lady named Bonnie Caidin?”

Lasari answered with a sardonic smile, a shrug. “Now we’re doing business. The lady, as you call her, is a casual friend, a one-night stand, as the old expression goes. Pretty as hell, but not particular about friends. She was giving, I was buying, and that’s about it.”

He saw the general’s jaw harden with anger and his big fists clench.

“Miss Caidin tried to get in touch with my son to talk about George Jackson. Then Miss Caidin took a savage beating in the garage of her apartment when she tried to go to my son. Know anything about that, soldier?”

Lasari heard the sharp intake of his own breath, then controlled himself so his answer was even and unemotional. “A one-night stand, general. I don’t think I’d know the lady if I saw her again...”

Weir knew that at the moment his judgment was clouded by rage, and something besides the soldier’s callous denials and defiance bothered him. He knew men and he knew how they acted under stress, and he sensed a shift in mood, an almost animallike wariness in this lean, blade-faced Italian. Even if the man was lying, and the general firmly believed he was, the lies did not have the strength of true deception, of venality.

“My son, Lieutenant Mark Weir, was shot and killed in Chicago a few days ago. He was shot because he knew something, or didn’t know enough. I think you are somehow connected to his death. I think you can give me some answers.”

“Look,” Lasari said, forcing anger. “You’re coming on pretty strong. I’m a buck-ass private in the U.S. Army doing my duty on assignment in Germany. I’ve got papers and I’ve got orders. I don’t know you or anything about a man you say got killed in Chicago. I don’t know why you’re telling me this shit.”

Lasari suddenly jerked on the male dog’s lead, and as the dog responded and rose he shouted, “Stay! Stay, goddamn it!” He squatted down beside the dog, holding him by a short leash, forcing him back into a sitting position.

He looked directly at Tarbert Weir standing above him and said, “I know I’m a good-looking guy, so this wouldn’t be the first time I got propositioned. Either you walk away from here right now and don’t bother me again, or I’m going to yell for the Polizei and report you as a goddamn pederast...”

Weir’s hand shot down and grabbed Lasari’s shoulder with a force that almost knocked him to the ground. The grip was tight as a vise, closing over his bruised flesh with a violence that sent a wave of pain through his whole body. For a moment he thought he would black out.

“... it’s my son, my only son, we’re talking about, my son and four other dead soldiers, and we are going to talk about it. I didn’t come three thousand miles to listen to some bastard’s lies and disrespect...”

Straining against the general’s powerful grip, Lasari managed to move his hand toward the dog’s collar. He looked up to be sure he had the general’s attention. With stiff fingers he pushed the neck fur aside to reveal the cylindrical microphone, shiny and narrow as a pencil. Weir’s hand dropped from Lasari’s shoulder.

“I can only say it again,” Lasari said roughly. “You got the wrong Jackson.”

Both men glanced around quickly. To Weir the park scene was unfamiliar but natural. Lasari thought he might have spotted a warning figure on the bridge — a bulky male was looking their way. It could be Eddie Neal, the man from the Atelier, even Strasser or a tourist. At this distance his camera almost completely concealed the man’s face.

When the general spoke again, his voice was without emphasis or inflection. “No need to call a policeman. I’ve made a mistake and I acknowledge that. They told me in Chicago I was wrong. Understand the strain I’ve been under...”

“Forget it, no harm done,” Lasari said.

The general went over to the bitch pup and patted her silver ruff. “Nice girl, nice girl,” he said. He turned to Danke and touched the dog’s muzzle, rubbed a hand over the head and neck muscles. Then he put his hand over the collar, completely covering the concealed microphone.

“Later, soldier,” he said to Lasari. “We’ll meet later.”

The man ran a few steps in place on the graveled path, then turned and set off at a brisk jog toward the Alte Brucke.