William McGivern - A Matter of Honor

The colonel paced in front of the fireplace with short steps, the ice in his glass rattling as he walked. “Who else is currently interested in this Lasari? Sergeant Karl Malleck. So we try the Chicago phone books, Winnetka, Wilmette, Lake Forest, the suburbs. As I said, Lasari is not a common name. There’s not one listed in the Chicago directory or thereabouts. So we put a routine call into Motors in Springfield, and there’s our man.”

The colonel was suddenly thoughtful. “I didn’t mention this to Copeland; in fact, it didn’t occur to me at the time, but those Springfield records gave us more on Lasari than his car make and current address...”

“What is that, colonel?” Major Staub said.

“Well, he changed that registration legally only about four months ago,” the colonel said, “did the paperwork, sent a money order for eight dollars and had the ownership changed to Durham Lasari. Before that he used the name George Jackson.”

“After ten years he got cocky, never thought we’d still go looking for him, right?” Captain Jetter said.

“Perhaps,” the colonel said, “but you miss a subtle possibility, Froggie. The man decided to use his real identity, go on record, be himself again. I believe the deserter may have been thinking about turning himself in.”

The colonel stopped in front of the fireplace, his back to the flames. Two spots of color showed on his taut cheekbones and his dark eyes had an almost liquid intensity. “I wonder if Sergeant Malleck knew that,” he said thoughtfully.

“Is that implemental now, colonel?” Captain Jetter asked. “If we’ve found Lasari, we can assume Malleck found him, too, and means to use him. We give them twenty-four hours to make contact, then we move in and close down the operation, here and in Germany, arrange a few therapeutic courts-martial...”

Colonel Benton held up his hand. “Quite the contrary,” he said, “and both Senator Copeland and I agree on this.”

A light tap sounded on the door. “Just a minute, please,” the colonel called out. “Our mutual decision on this...”

The door opened and Ellie Benton smiled in at the men. “Excuse me, darling,” she said to her husband, “but Patty wants you to look at her essay before we go. And we should be leaving soon if we want to make the soup course...”

Something in the colonel’s face, a rigidity and then an involuntary spasm of anger, caused his wife’s smile to fade quickly. “It’s not all that important, Robert. I’ll just go ahead in my own car if you like.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Colonel Benton said and stepped over to close the door behind her.

“My apologies, gentlemen.” He paused and listened to the sound of the front door opening and closing, then resumed his stance in front of the fireplace. “Our mutual decision, Senator Copeland’s and mine, is to put a lid over the whole Siegfried operation, keep it covert and contained. We issue our own pragmatic sanction in this matter. May I summarize my comments to the senator?” Both junior officers nodded.

“Once again it’s crux time in international relations,” Colonel Benton said. “Our country needs and is determined to keep the loyalty and cooperation of our NATO allies, particularly in Germany. And we want to keep a friendly status quo for our specialists stationed in Turkey, Greece, Belgium, Italy, The Netherlands and Great Britain, a good part of the civilized world.

“We’ve had enough of rallies in The Hague and Berlin and Brussels demanding their governments banish nuclear weapons and troops from their soil. We’ve juggled German public opinion against the presence of troops in their country for more than three decades. The Greens, with their anti-Establishment, anti-American determinations, have already earned themselves a place in the Bonnstag with five percent of the vote. We’re damned lucky that the conservatives managed to push Chancellor Kohl into office. He’s our man. The Russians don’t like that, but we do.

“We win some and we lose some, but the senator and I agreed that this Siegfried thing is one goddamn caper we’re going to win. Right now our relationship with NATO and/or Germany is in harmonious but delicate balance. What do you think would happen to that relationship, and to the image of Godalmighty America if it became known that men in the United States Army, compatriots in uniform, were running drugs, pure white, between the United States and Germany?”

The colonel paused as the sound of his wife’s car sounded on the graveled driveway. “If a press story broke now, it would be an unmitigated disaster, that’s Dexter Copeland’s phrase for it. If we went public, the media would have a field day, the Army would be in deep trouble. It would be an international scandal, the kind of propaganda ammunition that could destroy our control of Europe, Germany — all of NATO.”

“So what do we do, colonel?” Merrill Staub said.

“We put a lid over the entire operation, as I said,” Colonel Benton explained. “My plan — outlined to Copeland — is this. Ostensibly we will do nothing, nothing at all. We’ll let the crooked bastards in this operation do our work for us. We’ll use Lasari, or rather, we’ll let Sergeant Malleck ‘use’ Lasari in whatever way he has planned. We monitor Lasari’s movements through regular Army channels, but we let Malleck bring in the contraband one more time and grab him with the goods on this end. We want the contraband, Malleck and any other man in U.S. uniform who’s in cahoots with him.

“We’re not looking for a cure for this cancer, we’re just going to excise the roots. The operation will be speedy, sanitary and silent. We’ll make the necessary military arrests, arrange for quick courts-martial and then throw away the key to whatever federal pen the bastards get sent to. It’s an Army problem and we’ll keep it that way.”

The mood had changed in the study. It was relaxed, touched with subtle triumph. The colonel pulled down his black tie, then tossed the dregs of his gin into the fireplace and built himself a new drink. The spurt of steam from the hot coals filled the study with the acrid smell of juniper berries.

“It’s what the senator and I agree is the best strategy,” he said. “Water under the bridge, what they don’t know won’t hurt them, business as usual, that sort of thing. We wash our own dirty linen and we do it in private.”

He gestured toward the table of liquors. “Major, Froggie, help yourselves. It’s way past ice time.”

Captain Jetter moved toward the bar but Major Staub stood quiet, his face taut with concentration. Then he said, “Colonel, about this Lasari... do you plan to inform him of the role he’s playing, the work he is doing for us, as you put it? Longevity doesn’t seem to be part of the plan for Malleck’s couriers. Shouldn’t we factor in that inevitability?”

“I didn’t bring that up with Copeland, of course,” Colonel Benton said, “but I gave it some private thought. The key word is expediency, major, expediency. ‘All for the greater good,’ as the old saying goes. Foreknowledge might cause the man to spook our operation, so we tell him nothing. And Durham Lasari is a deserter, remember that. I don’t see that we owe him much of anything.”

Twice during the day Duro Lasari noticed a car slow up in front of the diesel station as if it meant to turn in, but both times the driver gunned the motor and drove off. In the heavy misting weather Lasari wasn’t sure it was the same car — gray, mud-splashed, a shine to the wheels — but he thought so. Around noon, when the crew was taking a lunch break, a young fellow, curly headed, blond, wearing a brown leather jacket, came in and asked the boss for change for the pay phone. When the boss said they had no pay phone but he could use the one in the office for a local call, the man shrugged, shook his head and went off down the street. It was an hour later that Lasari noticed a car slow up and drive by again.