Secret sanction

Chapter 25

At eight o’clock they came to get me. Martie accompanied the military policeman who carried the keys. He had showered and changed, and now he wore a striped suit with a striped shirt and a striped tie speckled with tiny stars. On top of his abominable taste, he was color-blind. It was all red, white, and blue. He resembled a walking American flag.

He looked tired, too, with lank hair and these big puffy dark things under his bloodshot eyes. He also looked mopey. He thought he had his crime solved, then the Army’s most respected brigadier general shows up to give me an alibi, and now poor Martie was right back where he started. Only a lot more tired.

I didn’t mind one bit, though. I mean, I liked Martie, but not enough to volunteer to stay here and be his culprit.

I went back to my tent, showered, shaved, and put on a fresh uniform. Delbert and Morrow were both back when I walked into the office. Nobody knew I’d been arrested and released. At least nobody acted as if they knew. The mole probably knew but was canny enough to keep it to himself. Or herself. Whichever.

I invited them both into my office. Then we spent an hour or so hashing through the motions of reviewing what they’d accomplished. The folks back at Bragg had told Delbert that a preemptive ambush wasn’t exactly what they’d envisioned when they wrote their rules of engagement. However, they reasoned, the parameters certainly fit as long as you stretched things the right way and as long as the team was under genuine duress. No surprise there.

Morrow had built a lengthy, intricate chronology of events that closely resembled the checkery outfit Martie had worn the day before. She’d produced this twenty-page computer-generated spreadsheet, composed of tiny color-coded blocks for each man in Sanchez’s team. It was an amazing piece of work. You could follow their every action for four straight days. I sarcastically mumbled something about how I couldn’t tell when they went potty in the woods, and she gave me this dead serious look and assured me she had that in an annex but would certainly integrate it in the master chronology if I thought that was necessary. I had no idea if she was kidding.

When we were done, Delbert and Morrow stood up and started to leave. Morrow suddenly paused at the door and asked if she could speak to me. In private, she stressed. I nodded, and she shut the door and returned to her same seat.

She looked deeply troubled. She paused, then said, “I’m having second thoughts.”

“About what?” I asked.

“It’s kind of hard to explain. Just a sense.”

“A sense about what?” I asked again.

“I no longer think they’re innocent.”

I shook my head and cleared my hearing. “You’re kidding, right?”

She looked me dead in the eye. “No. When I was working with them to construct this Chinese puzzle, I just got this impression that it was a little too fabricated. Does that make sense?”

“I wasn’t there,” I said in my most maddeningly ambivalent tone.

She stood up and began pacing. “Look, I make my living dealing with guilty clients. Sometimes, you know, you just get a sense. Well, I got that sense.”

“And just where was this sense last week?”

“Look, I know. I’ve changed my mind.”

She’d picked up a pencil and was holding it against her lip again. I don’t know why, I still found that sexy as hell.

“Look, Morrow, we’ve got two days to get this done. You saw those satellite pictures. You heard those transcripts.”

“I know,” she said, still moving back and forth across the front of my desk like one of those ducks in a carnival shooting gallery.

“Well, then, how in the hell do you explain it?”

“I can’t,” she said. “I just know. All nine of those men were able to perfectly reconstruct the events of those four days.”

I said, “Sure. They not only experienced it together, they also had ample time to discuss it among themselves. Get mad at that chunky Air Force jailer of theirs for letting them get away with that, but it doesn’t make them guilty.”

“Nine men don’t remember events with the kind of coordinated accuracy I heard over the past two days. It’s like they’ve been drilled and rehearsed. Like actors in a Broadway play. They never argued with one another. There were no contradictions.”

I stared at her incredulously.

She stopped pacing. “There’s a clincher, too.”

“And what’s this clincher?”

“Every man now knows exactly how many flares went off. Both before and after they were detected. Don’t you see what’s happening here? Even after you ordered that major to keep them separated, those men were somehow allowed to get back together and compare notes. I couldn’t find a single point of disagreement.”

This really was ironic. Here I’d suspected Sanchez and his men because they’d walked all over one another on the details, and now Morrow thought them guilty as hell because their stories were so mysteriously identical.

That’s when it hit me. That Tretorne. That devious, manipulative bastard. Morrow was the mole. He’d put her up into coming in here with this last-minute change of heart just to flush me out and see if I was going to keep our Faustian pact.

Well, I knew how to handle this. I said, “Look, Morrow, you can’t do this. It’s… well, it’s too late.”

She wheeled around and her eyes got kind of pointy and narrow. “It’s not too late until the packet’s signed.”

I tried my damnedest not to smile. She was such a charming schemer, but I now had her number.

“And how are you going to explain it?” I asked derisively. “You gonna vote for court-martial on the basis of your sixth sense? Or are you gonna try to explain that the witnesses were too good to be believed?”

“I’ll vote whatever my conscience tells me. I’ve got two more days to decide what that is, and I will not be pressured.”

“Hey,” I said, “I’m just trying to save you from embarrassing yourself. Delbert and I believe they’re innocent. I’m totally convinced of it. In fact, they’re heroes. They should all get medals for what they did.”

She scrutinized my face, and I guessed she was trying to decide if I was being genuine. I stared back with this look of fiery conviction, the same look I used to give court-martial boards when I was a defense counsel and my client was guilty as hell. Sometimes it actually worked. Sometimes it didn’t.

Finally, she pounced very angrily from the room. Tretorne and Murphy would’ve been very proud of her. A compelling performance right down to the finish line.

I, on the other hand, now had a vital phone call to make. I walked out and told Imelda I’d be back in an hour. I returned to my tent, put on my Harold Hufnagel disguise, then went back to the supply room. The same private was there, lounging in the back and listening to some rap group chanting about shooting and castrating cops. How would you like to be a cop and hear that tune pounding on the radio? Well, at least they weren’t chanting about lawyers. I asked the private, who was bouncing to the rap, if I could use the phone again. His head was bouncing, too, so I took that as a yes. I dialed Janice Warner’s number.

“Hello,” she answered.

“Hi, Mike Jackson here,” I said, employing my clever password.

“Oh, you,” she replied. “Is my delivery ready?” I could tell by her tone that she was having a little trouble playing along.

“Yeah. Can you come pick it up in fifteen minutes? After that, I’m gonna be tied up for a few hours.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”

I then positioned myself about midway between the mess hall and the Visiting Journalists’ Quarters. After about five minutes, I saw her heading my way, and I walked out and intercepted her. I took her arm and we started walking through the streets again.

She wore khaki trousers, a blue button-down shirt, and the same black leather jacket. In daylight, new observations came into play. She had great skin, very white, almost like alabaster. Her eyes, I now noticed, were nearly black, like her hair. And she had these thinly arched eyebrows, like curved scimitars. Very mysterious and very alluring.

“Hi,” I said.

There was no warmth in her recognition. “Hello, Sergeant Stupnagel.”

“Hufnagel,” I reminded her, “Harold Hufnagel. Harry to you, though.”

She rolled her eyes. “Right.”

“So did you get hold of your home office?” I asked.

“I did. They have no idea what you’re talking about. Berkowitz never mentioned anything about a breakthrough in his dispatch. Nor did he mention any inside source.”

“That’s damned curious. I mean, he went off like a whirling dervish the last time we spoke. I can’t believe he wasn’t gonna write about it.”

“I also did some checking on Jack Tretorne. Our reporter who covers the Agency knows him. He’s in charge of the Balkans. He’s even got a nickname. Jack of Serbia.”

“No kidding,” I said.

“Nope, no kidding,” she deadpanned. “Like Lawrence of Arabia. He’s been working Serbian affairs since 1990 when Yugoslavia first exploded. He’s got a great reputation, very smart, very capable. They say he’s the behind-the-scenes mastermind on nearly everything.”

“Makes you wonder why he’s here, huh?” I asked, giving her a sly, confidential wink.

She was still looking at me strangely, and I was starting to feel like Mel Gibson must’ve felt in that conspiracy movie.

She said, “Why wouldn’t he be here? There’s a war raging just across the border. Maybe if he was hanging around in Nicaragua, I might wonder. In fact, if he wasn’t here, I might wonder.”

I got this sense she was losing patience with me. I said, “So you’re telling me nobody heard Berkowitz mention anything interesting about this investigation?”

“No. But then the Kosovo massacre wasn’t really the main attraction that brought him here.”

That surprised me, until I thought about it. Then it made perfect sense. Of course. What Berkowitz was really interested in was the conspiracy between the CIA and the Special Forces. Breaking my massacre story might get him some acclaim, but exposing a modern replay of Operation Phoenix-hell, that would get him a seat in the Pulitzer hall of fame. Maybe he’d write a book about it, and they’d make a movie about him, like what happened with Woodward and Bernstein over Watergate. Who would they get to play Berkowitz, though? Dom DeLuise?

Only there was one very vexing problem with this scenario: His own newspaper didn’t know anything about it.

At that moment Warner said, “Look, Sergeant Stupnagel, I have to admit that I’m having a little trouble taking you seriously.”

I said, “No, you look, Miss Wiener-”

“Warner,” she sharply corrected.

“Right, and like I’ve told you four times, my name’s Hufnagel. Harry Hufnagel.”

She gave me the kind of look usually reserved for used-car salesmen. Black eyes, by the way, can be very penetrating. She said, “Well, that’s part of our problem here. I had the information office run down your name. There’s only one Hufnagel in all of Tuzla. She’s a legal specialist on temporary duty.”

“A rose is a rose by any other name,” I said.

“You’re no rose. Who are you?”

My first impulse was to lie again. Make up some name like Godfrey Gommeners: I mean, I was getting tired of Harold Hufnagel anyway. But why not tell her who I really was? All the jigs were up at this point anyway, and it wasn’t like I could get in any deeper trouble than I was already in.

“Okay, I’m Major Sean Drummond. I’m the chief investigating officer for the Kosovo massacre.”

She looked at me curiously, like I’d suddenly gravitated to a whole new plane. “Can you prove that?”

“If you insist. I actually have this military ID card they issued me, but it’s back in my tent. I could always take you back to my office, but then I’d get in trouble, because I’m not authorized to deal with the press.”

“Then why this masquerade?”

“Because I believe Berkowitz’s murder was somehow connected to my investigation.”

“And you wanted me to fill in some blanks for you?”

“Actually, yes. That’s exactly what I wanted.”

“But you didn’t want me to get a hook into you? Was that it?”

I acted embarrassed, which wasn’t too difficult, because I was. I said, “Look, Berkowitz did a hatchet job on me on the front page of your paper. He also tried to blackmail me. Under the circumstances…”

She seemed very disappointed in me. Those scimitar-like eyebrows sliced downward in a deeply disapproving frown. “And you have no solid information about Berkowitz’s murder? Do you?”

“I can tell you he was murdered by a pro. I can tell you it had something to do with the story he was covering. And I’ll repeat again, I believe it was connected to my investigation.”

I decided not to mention that I was also being framed for his death. Or that my office was tapped and that the conversation Berkowitz and I had there might’ve been the trigger to his murder. After all, I needed her to trust me, and I already seemed to be having a bit of trouble in that department.

She said, “And that’s it?”

I said, “Well, what do you think got him murdered?”

She seemed ambivalent for a few seconds, and I hoped her mental coin toss landed in my direction. I gave her my most endearing expression, which, like my look of fiery conviction, tends to get mixed results.

Finally she said, “Major Drummond, I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m still having a little trouble trusting you.”

I said, “Story of my life. Every pretty girl I ever met says that.”

She chuckled a bit, and that took some of the edge off.

“Look, Janice,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster, “we’re headed in the same direction. I’m an Army officer. I don’t like the idea that someone who wears my same uniform slipped a garrote around a reporter’s neck. I’m also an officer of the court. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe crime should pay.”

She said, “All right, all right. I just don’t think I can help you. If we had any idea what got Berkowitz murdered, you’d be reading about it on the front page of the Herald. He was covering your investigation. And he was doing the occasional routine piece on the operation in Kosovo. We just don’t see any angles there that got him killed.”

“Was there anything else?” I asked.

“Well, he was also running some silly investigation on neoNazis and white supremacists in the Army. It was a personal passion of his. A crazy thing he’d been working on for years. Berkowitz was Jewish, you know. His grandparents actually died in the Nazi death camps.”

Only with great difficulty did I keep a perfectly straight face. “What kind of investigation?”

“This time he was following a trail he had picked up at Fort Bragg. I don’t know much about it. Some group of soldiers helping train a bunch of hicks to blow up and burn synagogues and Black churches. Nobody took it too seriously. From what I hear, he was always finding new leads for his story, and they always went nowhere.”

“And that’s why he was here?”

“According to Bob Barrows, his editor, it’s one of the things he was checking on. Remember that string of church arsons about a year back? Berkowitz thought the man behind it might be here.”

I said, “You’re kidding.”

She said, “No, really.”

I almost blurted out, “You’re not going to believe this. I think I know exactly who he was looking for.”

I didn’t, though. Partly because my mind suddenly got very busy. It would be an incredible coincidence, but fate owed me a break. Sergeant Major Williams was an expert with a garrote, since all of us in the outfit were taught how to use that ghoulish thing. He’d been thrown out of the outfit for mucking around with a bunch of backwoods, redneck racists. And he had a brutally short fuse and a bent toward cruelty. I could testify to that in excruciating detail. But murder? Yes, I could see that son of a bitch murdering somebody. With a garrote, too. Hell, he’d probably smile as he did it.

Then one more piece of the puzzle suddenly went kaplunk! Maybe this was how Berkowitz knew about the existence of the outfit. Maybe he had a source somewhere who told him about Williams, and maybe that same source put him on to me.

My thoughts were interrupted by a now-curious Miss Warner, who grabbed my arm. “Do you know something about this?”

I summoned every ounce of innocence I could. “No, not really. I mean, bigots sometimes slip through our net, but I think you’re right. Probably just some crazy idea he had that didn’t pan out. I’d be willing to do some checking around, though.”

She looked disappointed. The edges of her lips sagged a little, and she said, “I have to admit that the first time you called, I thought this was what it was about. Hufnagel’s a good German name, and you said you were a sergeant. I mean, I thought it fit, and-”

As much as I didn’t want to arouse her suspicions, I glanced down at my watch and said, “Geez, look what time it is! Listen, I’ve got to take another interrogatory. Why don’t I give you a call, if I find something?”

She was no dummy. Her eyes got even narrower, almost squinty. “Yeah, why don’t you do that,” she said as I dashed away.

It is an old Army axiom that you should never defecate in your own mess kit, but I really couldn’t tell her about my old buddy Sergeant Major Williams. For one thing, she was a reporter, and all I had was a suspicion based on an odd coincidence. A suspicion with pretty strong legs, but still. Besides, I had other plans for my newest revelation.

The neat box Tretorne and Murphy had built around me had suddenly developed a fatal flaw. They’d lose all their leverage over me if I could prove Williams murdered Berkowitz. I rather looked forward to that. I still owed Williams for two false teeth and about a month of pissing blood out of my pummeled kidneys anyway. As for Tretorne and crew, I owed them something special, too. I’d rewrite my investigation summary and blow them all to pieces. I’d say I had great difficulty getting at the truth because of Tretorne’s plotting and Murphy’s conspiracy. I’d write about the director of the National Security Agency, who was in the cover-up so deep he’d even fabricated false evidence. I still wasn’t positive whether Clapper was in or out. His calls had been strategically timed, and that was suspicious, but not ironclad. Anyway, I’d find some way to take a whack at him, too.