William McGivern - A Matter of Honor

It had been a failure to take action that first alerted Intelligence to ask for a tap on Malleck’s phone. Privates Cullen and Baggot, both wearing the uniform of the United States Army, had been killed weeks apart within a twenty block radius of the old Armory and within easy patrol or notification range of Malleck’s unit. Yet in each case it had been the Chicago police who had found the bodies, conducted preliminary investigation and notified the Army.

When the third soldier, Private Jones, was also found dead by civilian police only a few blocks out of the original perimeter, Intelligence asked for and got permission to put a tap on the Armory phones.

Somebody wasn’t doing his job right, Captain Jetter knew, and that usually meant that someone was concentrating on doing something wrong.

His mood was somber as he studied the glowering weather. It wasn’t the structure or concept of the American military complex that caused the problems. It was the human factor — greed, self-preferment, the Karl Mallecks of the world who spotted a chink in the system and like piranhas went for the smell of blood and profits.

It was fortunate for the Army, Jetter thought, that the majority of first sergeants were industrious, unimaginative and honest career men, efficient, loyal and good middle-level administrators. On a day-to-day level, peacetime or war, it was the top sergeants who ran the Army and within reasonable boundaries could run it as they pleased.

Every decade a bad apple got loose in the ranks. Jetter had been a junior officer, stationed in Vietnam, when the big PX embezzlement scandal broke there, and the press in Saigon got wind of the fraud almost before Intelligence did. A pair of top sergeants in charge of PX supply and procurement had been falsifying inventories and demanding kickbacks from Stateside suppliers and hundreds of thousands wound up in personal bank accounts. It was partly those sergeants, those corrupters, Captain Jetter thought sourly, who had made it impossible for the Army to win that war. Those larcenous first shirts had pulled their scam for years right under the eyes of Army Intelligence, only because they had the savvy and clout of top sergeants.

Captain Jetter collected his files on Karl Malleck (the Siegfreid Express was the operation’s code word) and tucked them into his briefcase. He pulled on an overcoat, worked a pair of rubbers over his L.L. Bean loafers and tied a wool muffler around his neck. The captain had been ordered to bring his files to Colonel Richard Benton’s home in Georgetown. “He’d like to see you around cocktails,” was the way his superior Major Staub had put it on the phone; around, not for cocktails. There was a difference.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon. Captain Jetter decided he had time to stop at the Adonis Spa for a workout, a sauna and rubdown before keeping his appointment with his superiors. He was thirty-seven years old, a seasoned professional in his trade, and an addict about physical fitness. He observed stringent rules about eating and drinking, favored dark suits with pinstripes, worked out three times a week in the gym, but still his physique and his prep school nickname stuck and rankled him.

Captain Jetter wouldn’t have minded being called “Froggie” if he’d been a star on the swimming or water polo teams at Choate, but he’d been called “Froggie” because his classmates decided he looked like a frog with his thick torso, short bull neck and protruding eyes. Only fastidious personal habits and grueling physical workouts controlled his self-consciousness and made the captain’s squat, powerful body acceptable to him.

“Anatomy is destiny...” That thought went through his mind for the thousandth time as he walked toward his Mercedes in the parking lot. Sigmund Freud had made that pronouncement and Jetter had read it somewhere.

But it was Lenin who knew that ultimate power rested in the control of the records, Jetter recalled as he put his briefcase into the trunk of his car, tucked it under a blanket, then turned the key in a custom lock. Never mind the generals at the barricades or the orator in the streets, it was the men who wrote the rules and kept the records who ultimately wrote history.

“Froggie” Jetter had read that somewhere, too, probably in college.

After his forty-five-minute workout, Jetter sat in the sauna with a towel around his waist. An attendant had sprinkled wintergreen scent on the hot stones and the room had the sticky, sanitized odor of a public lavatory. Jetter shifted to the top redwood shelf and hunched over in the misty heat, breathing in and out of his mouth.

He was puzzled by the sudden interest in this seemingly minor operation, a maverick sergeant abusing his privileges for unknown reasons. Until today, Intelligence’s surveillance had been routine and cursory, and the tap on Sergeant Malleck’s phone had netted them nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary. Yet almost immediately after he had messengered the tape request for the service records on one Durham Lasari, plus a call from a Chicago Tribune reporter named Caidin — after those routine memos had been sent to Major Staub, an aide from the major’s office had called Jetter and told him to hold for the major. It was then that he had been ordered to report to Colonel Benton’s home in Georgetown that evening.

A maid took Captain Jetter’s coat and muffler, and after he removed his wet rubbers showed him into a book-lined study with a coal fire in the grate. Major Staub was already there, standing by an antique table laden with an array of liquor bottles, a salver of crackers and a silver bowl of whipped cheese. He nodded at Jetter and then helped himself to the crackers and cheese.

Tall and softly padded, Staub was in uniform but the smart olive drab jacket only emphasized the swelling paunch, the rounded, unmilitary sag of his shoulders. In his late forties, Merrill Staub was balding, with patchy tufts of blond hair dotting his scalp. But his eyes were a direct, piercing blue and his air of disarray had a certain elegance about it, suggesting authority and a preoccupation with higher matters. Staub was unmarried, a dogged, tireless worker and destined, according to Pentagon rumors, to follow Colonel Benton to the top of Army Intelligence in a few years.

“You bring everything on Siegfried, Froggie?”

“Everything we have to date, sir.”

“Not quite,” Major Staub said. “I implemented your information and got a copy of that Lasari service record. Colorado photo-wired it about two hours ago and I had a memo sent to Colonel Benton at his request. He needed an immediate briefing.”

Major Staub studied a fleck of cracker that had dropped on the sleeve of his jacket, then flicked it off with a square fingernail. “For what it’s worth, Froggie,” he said, “Lasari’s about thirty-two now but he hasn’t been in the Army for about ten years or so. His file is open but inactive. He deserted, whereabouts unknown.”

A chunk of cannel coal cracked apart with a pop like a firecracker, sending a glowing cinder onto the hearth. Staub walked to the fireplace and kicked the burning coal back into place with the toe of his polished boot. Somewhere in the house a phone began to ring.

“This case is getting complicated,” the major said.

The study door opened and the colonel’s wife, a tall, pretty woman in a long dress, looked in on them, smiling. “Hello, Merrill, Froggie. My heavens, aren’t you drinking?”

“We’re fine, Ellie,” the major said, “just fine. Don’t you give us another thought.”

“Richard will be down soon,” Mrs. Benton said. “He’s struggling with studs or cufflinks, I expect. We’re dining at Admiral Wood’s and it’s black tie. Richard hates that. Excuse me, fellows, okay? My number two child is writing a piece on hospitals and she can’t spell ‘catheter’ or ‘cathartic’ or some such thing, and I’ve got to lend a hand.”